Going For A Run (The 5 Stages)

I’ve said it before and it still is the case
I’d lose my mind if I kept it in one place

I don’t really know what to say anymore
So I choose to say so little, it seems
It feels like I should have a mouthful to let forth
Amidst whispers to whimpers, laughs into screams
From thoughts and prayers back to jokes and dreams
Puffs of smoke that float and choke back the steams
Burst at the seams
Steep and brew up into something much more
Altogether screwed up
Swallowed, gnashed and chewed up
The most nasty stuff that can’t get through
The hole in my head that was arrogantly
Nailed, glued, and screwed shut
And for what?

Try to understand
I felt pride for this land for the first few hands
That the tide and the rip and the cascade
We would withstand
And not just out of chaos, but with seance
Bringing back the chorus to play us
One more sweet tune of joyous noise
“We shall overcome...”
I thought even if we came of different tempers
Scattered shades and various assemblies
We could assemble and send up the remedy
We could grow stronger and make this the end of
Our bitterest energies as we cued to
The beginning to endless fond memories
We could enter subliminal synergy
We could...

Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought was going to happen
Because it didn’t
It turns out there was a lot that I thought was going to happen

I thought we were going to be better together, even though we were already great
And I thought we were all in this for each other, and we were all pulling for the same fate
And I truly believed that those who had the chance to would own the mistakes on their plate
But I see what’s at stake, and what’s to come, and that’s what makes my heart break

I think I’ve been inside for too long
Suppose I’ll go for a run down the boulevard
Never knowing which direction along
Which I may be hoisted by my own petard
Left scarred from an action meant to bring my sanity
And my energy
Hell, my very health
Back to the proper yard
Don’t disregard my ready guard
As just an errant mental shard
Just watch, for the next time you regard
An unsuspecting suspect at large
Whose only fear is the waning moments left
Before the “warning” discharge
I hate to play this card
I hate to say that I have to look twice as hard
As I wander
Keep a second mind by design to not squander
The blessings I’ve been given
As I come across an interloper
Hoping I’m from not here
But somewhere back over yonder
Not necessarily the hood, or the ghetto, or the slums
Just not this neighborhood, not this community of chums
No one bumping down their street to the heavy bass and blaring drums
Singing, “WE SHALL OVERCOME...”
But please understand

Please understand that for every twinge of hint of xenophobic rage
So many others have set the table, opened the door, cleared the stage
Turned the page
How badly I want to say that we’ve not only freed the inhabitants
But have broken the cage
Pushed past the level of mere toleration
But busted the lever, and broken the gauge
I see all those that have become enraged
I see all those that demand change
Not because those engaged share the same semblance as them
But because they understand freedom and justice are always at play
And turning away means it could be another group
Left in dismay on any other day
And yet way
Way
Wayyyyyyy
Too many people left still don’t want to take a step back
And display the exact impulse stuck in their cracked array
That instead of empathize with a black man that lays flat
Just say back, “Maybe those people shouldn’t act that way.”

I mean, that’s the next act to this play, is it not
The darkening of the victim in slot
The explanation that he was deserving of what he got
Be it broken or battered, or poisoned, or shot
The noose was long due for the one that it caught?
Just saying, that’s the antics
To come off as pedantic but change the dynamics
To calm down and mute the upset and the frantic
Let me mute my surprise that there’s more in disguise
Behind the horror witnessed by eyes upon eyes

It’s coming, regardless
And it’s hard to know to what everyone can even agree anymore
Hard to get down pat who or what even matters
Facts certainly don’t
If the truth is what we all agree on
And we can’t agree on anything?
What’s the use in valuing truth?
Really, what’s your excuse?
You dig and you press and you prod and you fight nail and tooth
So the next comes along, pulls up Google and is just as much a sleuth?
I’m tired of arguing and jumping through hoops
Just to bend one opinion that can rally the troops
And call me a sheep for my source of the proof
While having nothing behind their own points to prove?
You can stay woke, dude
I’ll stay aloof

No, no, no
I can’t go outside anymore
Can’t breathe the same air
Can’t feel joy from prayer
Can’t meet with those whose pain we now share
Can’t bring myself to break my stare
Can’t leave the couch or comfy chair
There are moments I can’t bring myself to care
That it’s all going on out... there
It’s hard enough to take care of my normal affairs
And now I’m bottled up in this whole entirely full of shit
Pit of despair just because I let myself forget it has always been there

You see
This is what happens sometimes when you go for a run
You venture in a direction and once you’ve begun
It’s not where you expected to find yourself flung
And you have to finish what can’t be undone
And you’re face to face with something that you’re not too sure that
“We shall overcome...”

But in another time, when our songs are all sung
And smaller naive souls need wisdom to grow
Maybe it’s us that can show just how far we’ve come
To put in perspective how far we can go

I told you before, because it still is the case
I’d lose my mind if I kept it in one place