Dark Knight

The one thing about the darkness, is how it tricks you. How it holds you tight and grips you in its false warmth. The thing about the darkness is how it welcomes you and distracts you from ultimately finding the light. It misdirects you as you're finding your way through the pain, the hurt, the disappointment. You believe all you are to believe. You got God on speed dial, Allah is your friend on Facebook, Buda is in your top friends on MySpace and JC is your homie. You pray, fast, think positive about others even when they do you wrong. You keep optimism in your spirit and joy in your pocket. You walk in the path of truth and enlightenment. And despite your good nature and patient ways, you still find yourself thrust into the midst of some bs. You sigh, pout, and then you get a wave of rejuvenation and proclaim: I will not let this get me down. The wave crashed against the shore of doubt and fizzles casually off to sea. You wander, lost.
You sit, you shake your head and you feel each piece of your heart break off and tumble down to the depths of your belly. The low low lowwwww down part, the inner under belly, the pit from which hunger derives and sorrow dwells. Each piece of your soul drifts like autumn leaves across an ocean...fluttering ever so softly into the eternal. Into the crevice of a bottomless darkness. You think quietly to yourself, seek council of the divine power, meditate, and turn to friends and family. Then, after all the right you could possibly do; you find it's so hard keeping your head up with a heavy heart.
Even if you've protected yourself from this moment, it's still not the same as when the bulb on your night light goes out. Your armor, though polished and strong still was not enough to prepare you for the battle ahead. You stumble thru the dark night and bang your knee or stub your toe. Reach aimlessly for the string on the lamp that is funnily enough, not in the same spot you remember.
It's like no matter how many happily ever after's are told you when you are tucked in, regardless of how many fairy tale's are read to you over and over again, there is no brace for when the band aid is ripped off and out pops the boogy man. Or the monster lurking in your closet. The goblins under the bed. You were content to coexist with them as long as they only came out to play once you were sound asleep. Tucked safely away in the clouds of dreamland. Yet when we wake or worse yet, suffer a rude awakening. When the curtains get thrown open and the sun comes spilling through. When the neighbors blast the music and you roll over and almost fall out of bed or you do fall and that bruise on your hip or elbow will be the reminder. The reminder that since you couldn't pull yourself up, you couldn't get your ass out of bed that somebody had to do it. The same way the mighty can be thrown down to nothing, the nothing can rise up and be mighty. As we grow up we find out the truths behind our myths and urban legends. The truth hurts, as we all know. But how jaded would we be to walk in perpetual wonderment. Surely the child in us never dies and in some of us, never even gets old...but it's when the two meet. The responsible adult with the wide-eyed innocence. It's when old meets new. When you look in the mirror and was once so sure and then became lost...only to stumble through the fog, make your way out of the darkness and back into the light. The light in your life. And so it's no easy task. I laugh to myself as I confess you that I struggle with this daily. I've seen alot thru these eyes and one thing that looks back at me every time. Is that no matter how easy it is to give in to dark, to give up on self, you just cannot do it. You have to find the strength behind your own eyes. No, you are not going to wake up and just have all the answers, but you have to be willing to work thru the questions. One at a time. You have to be the voice of reason, the calm before, during and after the storm. You have to find the light in you. The dark knight on a strong stallion will break horizon and come to take you off into the sunset, but "you cannot ask God to order your steps, if you are not willing to move your feet."