Part 2 — Twenty-Eight Found: Nothing To Prove

 

So you traded in those Twenty-Eight, one at a time,

For those “yous” that must be proved, an endless hard climb.

Be the Good One. Be the Kind One. Be Strong to be fine.

Or be the Peacemaker smoothing the cracks in the line.

Be the Helpful. Be the Humble. Be the Never-Complains.

Be the One Who Understands but who is never explained.

Be the Low-Maintenance One who needs nothing at all.

The Together One, holding it in. Watch her not fall.

But not one is a Natural. Each one is a lid…

Pressing down on whole handfuls. And that's where they hid.

​

Then some of us jump to the “opposite” chair:

Be Nobody-Tells-Me. Be the One Who Won't Care.

Be the Screw-Up, the Lost Cause, the Too-Much, the Shout.

Be the One Who Leaves First so he's never thrown out.

This looks like an exit. This smells like the door.

It's just another small room on the very same floor.

​

While the Good One works hard for a wage to arrive,

The Lost Cause works hard so that none will arrive.

He's excused from the test. He's let off of the hook.

And that weight lifting off him is pay, though it took…

Just as much daily labor as chasing that "A."

One sincere little try puts the hook back in play.

​

Now praise does not argue. And blame does not weigh.

They’ve no reasons to offer. No case they can lay.

In an even contest against “What does this cost?”

They would easily lose. They would lose and stay lost.

So judgment never competes with the truth, it’s a crook.

It puts your mind in a fog, you can’t balance the books!

Judgment fucks up your mind, it blows reason out the door,

So you only see the choices that make you more poor.
 

Now they warn: if you quit chasing praise and don’t duck the blame,

You'll think only of yourself, and right now: that's their claim.

But it's praise that’s short-sighted. It bribes now where you stand.

And it's blame that can't see past the back of its hand.

Let them go, and the far road comes clear through the haze:

What choices really cost you, over years, not in days.
 

Those Twenty-Eight never left, they're right under my mask.

They’re just eclipsed, waiting for my courage to ask:

Please dare to come out and each sing all your songs.

I’ll re-own you as who I have been all along.

I’ll put those songs in the air. I’ll come out to play.

I'll Dance. I'll be Silly. I'll say No. On display!

That's the Me on the curb, and he's starting to move.

I've been always the Me where there's nothing to prove.

​