staying out past dark

olly, olly oxen free, oh,
in final scream, pain falling away,
as the blame game ceases
while the clock stops marching
backwards, the color returning
to shade my cheeks in healthy glow,
teasing my lips, snow white's ruby red,
no longer poison to my eyes,
fueling my gut past hunger's swell,
pouring blood like wine to my legs,
once cold peripherals, out of view,
under my previously thick skin,
shyly soften, easing up,
renewed by the eagerness to be
swimming free in blue-green oceans,
bypassing the deadends, the clotting,
the internal bleeds that flooded
highways meant to go to my head,
to cleave my heart complete to soul,
arms spread wide in colorful dress,
no longer crossed over my chest,
tearing off the black sweatshirt,
the in-roads, now leading out
past the tapestry of night,
with the journey to the core
on the blessed return trip,
revealing that art can thrive,
manifested as more than
bruises and festering blisters,
the scarred-rotten surviving words
stuffed in drawers and cabinets,
filling up all the clean spaces
that were meant to hold the sun,
life for splashing across pages,
canvases, in open water wash,
made of colors this time,
instead of the salt sea of tears,
drowning the curled yellow page,
updating, renewing for all worth,
old photos, textures in collage,
altered items, taking on new shape,
their flatness replaced by the bulky
true -ness, bled out between the lines,
of a previously starved page
unable to hold itself together,
not truly to its self, all by itself,
all because i have healed,
and poetry is everywhere!
in everything i do, the physical
application of all mediums
filling me now, making me whole,
every page i put my mind to,
a 3-dimensional declaration,
as i finally exhibit my best work,
hardly feeling taxed at all,
forever gone the struggle,
buried deeply dead, the grudge,
the pain, i thought was mine,
by default, because i chose to embrace
the me that was, the real me inside me,
the shadow who can now feel,
an artist who reaches for
the sky instead of the walls
of a locked, razorwire cage,
in a world that is large,
loud! -and decorated by
a billion-and-one colors
that respond now to light.

fragment/collage by anne cunningham 06/16/2004 (the smaller quote encircled in the woman's arms reads, "We turn not older with years, but newer every day," by Emily Dickinson).