From Shackles to Muscle by Me

"From Shackles to Muscle"

So many years having to sit within the perimeter of the picture frame of religion

Every Sunday having to sit in the the wooden box

So long my ears bearing the pain of gossip and after critique

With shackle weights to weigh down my hands and feet

Only assigned to speak as a unified sound to every hymn and recitement

I feel myself trapped in a photograph of black and white

I love you God, you know I love you as a Father, but why "this"

I pull and break off one of the chains of my hand and you unlocked the rest

you opened the doors to a land transferring me to an open canvass of temporary escape

showing me the glimpse of freeness, unitement, and relationship

no structure with plenty of spectral hue, just a canvass

Then, as I am walking around in this land of a painting,

a man of God walks into the room of the gallery

he looks upon the painting and says "This painting, should it be framed, 

or should this person along with the people inside it be sculpted and colored 

of the abstract hues within it?"

Within the canvass of the painting I could not scream my wails of No

God said to the man, knowing he would pick the strenuous one, "What do you think?"

The man said, "I'll "sculpt" them. That's what I'll do!"

He requested a copy of the painting and took it home

Once he got to his house, he placed it in his garage and uncloaked a tall block of clay

looking at the two, he began to sculpt

slowly as he worked he spoke to us in the painting

for so long we had been in this painting able to spin, shout, and play in the Spirit

now, I could feel a pain of "stretch"

Each day that he got back from church he would sculpt and recite things I painfully remembered

With each curve of the arm, every time he would press his hands into the clay of the head or 

stomach would cause a painful rage inside me

His music was always half new and half hymn

having my mind reach a point of numbness towards restoration

As he was finally finishing the definition in the arms having finished all the others

he colored the clay with soft tints of yellow, green, orange, blue

with bold skilled wipes of red and blue and purple leaving my eyes white and clear

Once he was finished, he stepped back to see this mass of identity and worship

that he had sculpted with the elements of discipline and structure I could feel apart of me

Finally, as an act of signature, he placed his hands on my head saying, 

"May ye go forth in vibrant "knowledge" and "identity" as God's firm and "colorful" vessel!"

The End