Be the love you want to give
Give love to live life
Let love dissipate strife
Let love give and get love
Love who you’re with
If you can’t be with whom you love
Give it all you’ve got
A pep talk on love
Be who you want to love
Wish you’d stop shoving me away
A voice from above
My true love
Live the love you want to give
Be the love you want to get
See love I give
Give love I get
Be the love I see
Give the love I want to be
Can’t control thoughts and feelings
that come through me
Can control what I do about them
Can’t be who you expect me to be
Can only be who I am
I am talking to the framer, Igball, when artist lady interrupts my flow.
Artist lady says, “Hey wait,
you’re speaking about the artist guy, the one with the scars across his face.”
Oh my, I say to myself in my head.
Aloud I reply, “He’d be so angry to
have you define him that way, ‘by scars that line his face.’”
“How’d you meet?” asked Igball.
“I went to meet him to watch him
paint. Guards chased him away from the sidewalk where he painted. I wanted him
to paint where he wanted to, and he asked me to speak to the guards. So I spoke
to them to protect his rights.”
“Another guard came to talk to me,
not the one who’d chased Enrico away. He said, ‘I saw you earlier painting on
the street when I came to work. I recognized you by your scars.’
“Enrico went off. ‘You recognized
me by my scars. How are my scars relevant to this situation? Now I know you’re
violating my human rights.’ I didn’t see his scars. I looked into his eyes. His
eyes looking back into mine mesmerized me. It wasn’t until the guard pointed
them out that I saw his scars.”
“Oh I do hope you won’t tell him
what I said,” artist lady said, “I just wanted to identify him. He’s very
beautiful.” She said, “Gorgeous, don’t get me wrong. Then I went home and cried
all night.”
I listened to her, looked in her eyes
and died a little more inside.
“You’d cry more if you were me,” I
said. “He has a mean streak. He told me,
‘Blame my parents who abused me.’ I want to report his father and mother for
abuse but every state has different laws, and in Los Angeles, it’s too late to
report. They got away with it. I hang out with him and he gets angry very easy,
every little thing sets him off, becomes an offense. If he heard you now he’d
get very angry like he did when the guard said he recognized him by his scars.”
“Well, please don’t tell him,” she
pleaded.
I wrote it all here instead.
Igball stared in my eyes and saw
me, ‘the me’ who I feel I am.
