I’ve clawed and fought; swung and missed.  I wanted peace but destroyed it when I could.  I raged for freedom but my rage was heavier steel than any prison bars.  I wanted and raged, but I never really asked myself what peace and freedom looked like for me.

I didn’t know during those years of acquiring anger and hate that what I wanted and hoped for and prayed for was to live each day the way my grandma’s jardin smelled in the early morning.  I wanted to live every day in that feeling.  Really, I wanted my life to be that smell and feeling:  new and clean, holding the same potential as the black, nourishing soil.

Instead, I thought I could gain credentials and skills and find money and power and then I’d gain more money and power until I could simply buy or force that smell into my life.

But, in those days of meds and therapy, I wanted nothing more than to be a blue bird that I used to watch sing outside my window.  He sang and flew and was free.  The aimless drive in me had to die.

I know now that death is nothing more than dark earth waiting to begin again.

And anger is clay.

It was a good lesson to learn.  My life and my career have always been a balancing act between seemingly disparate realities in that I am a poet and author; as well as, a software developer.  Language has always been my tool, my pain, and my weapon.

My life has been a battle between languages and cultures; between technology and art.  Through this battle, I have become an educated man; I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and a Master of Arts in Education (at-risk youth).  I have become a published author.  And I have become a management professional in a highly technical, seemingly non-human world. Through it all, though, I had to win the battle that gave birth to the thing inside of me that sometimes rushes to the front of my consciousness and drives words to the page in a dizzying fashion. In more ways than I can count, the thing inside of me is the energy I use to accrue credentials and my writing and performing life.

There’s a lot to be angry about in this confused and blunted world.  But I don’t and won’t run from my anger; it is my clay from which I form ideas and hopeful objects through which everyone can see that life is a matter of choosing to use energy, even if its dark, to create the life we want.    Anger is my clay.