My Bad, Poetry (The Colour Grey) | Freedom

This next poem from The Colour Grey is another I won't be rewriting. In this case, it's because this happens to be one of my favourites in the book. Re-reading it today, more than a decade after penning it, I more clearly understand why.

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As a child, I was, more or less, as devout of a Christian as you could expect a child to be. But when I first heard the story of the devil originally being an angel who was cast out of heaven, I began questioning our so-called Father's motives. I remember several family members attempting to address my concerns, parroting the same unsatisfactory responses that had only served to more deeply frustrate me. They can be forgiven though, I think, for not being able to offer a solution to the longstanding philosophical problem of evil.

Still, unlike Jagger, my family could find no sympathy for the devil. I, on the other hand, at the tender age of eleven, began to do more than have sympathy for him. I began to feel empathy for the devil. As time went on, I began identifying more and more with what I perceived as his plight. To me, God became a tyrant and the devil a troubled revolutionary.

Yet, I continued on in my faith, mostly because--how do you beat an omnipotent dictator (any and all ideas are welcome)? Some scholars and professionals studying autism might suggest my preoccupation with the devil was born out of, in particular, aspie obsessions with underdog justice and tendencies to rebuff authority. And, frankly, I do not think they'd be wrong. When, later as a teen, I converted to Isalm, the problem became harder for me not to wrestle with.

New to my cosmology was the idea that there were demon-like shapeshifters called Jinn with families, kids, regrets, joys, and vendettas--all very much like us. Very much alike indeed, down to the need to eat and drink, but somehow, to me, also oppressed by being literally no more than roaches, unconsciously squished beneath our heels as our Lord decreed. It didn't take long for Islam to also leave me frustrated and in need of a change.

Shortly before college, I determined, despite wanting and trying to believe in what, to me, was plainly illogical, that I was an atheist. In my most critical moments, even as a child, my desire to believe was never bolstered by that elusive force, faith.

In a sense, accepting that I didn't truly believe any of this stuff was therefore liberating. It was a part of my truth set loose and free to be. But it was also and is sometimes still isolating. Although, given my particular sociability, this is not always unwelcome. In this poem and most others where I invoke demons or the devil, I thus offer a sympathetic (albeit symbolic) treatment of them/him.

As someone on the spectrum, I think such a treatment is all the more important to dispelling the kinds of myths that seep into our everyday interactions with fellow human beings. Throughout the world and across cultures still today, many "mental illnesses" are seen as affected by a dirty little demon. On the other side of the same coin, religion has even been used, specifically in the case of autism, as an explanation for the deep emotionality and so-called empathic qualities of some of those living on the spectrum.

A few years ago, as an hours-long argument between my father and I began boiling over from shouting to posturing and physical threats, he bellowed, filled with rage, "I am the devil!" I was shocked. This was only a year or two before I found out I was likely on the spectrum myself but, in retrospect, this marked an initial suspicion that he may be too. This was coming from the man who, twenty minutes prior, demonstrated his piousness (in contrast to my impiety) by arguing humans and dinos once lived together in harmony. I'm not sure what part of the Bible he got that from, nor were we arguing really about anything related to the matter. It was, instead, just a part of two potentially undiagnosed aspies trying to unreasonably disagree on various things.

When he said this, I was stopped short. My next counterpoint, the anger swelling up to my eyeballs, the desire to "keep this up just as long as you," all left me instantly. It was as if, by his name, a curse was lifted from my spirit. I stood up, my father looming over me with heavy tears filling his view, and I hugged him. "You're not," I hushed.

When he said "I am the devil," my father didn't mean it as a threat or warning nor was it said in the sarcastic way one might say to a teen complaining about curfew or something. Rather, he meant it. As I took it, he genuinely felt possessed by a force he had only known to associate with evil. In him, in that moment, I recognized myself in a way I had never before. That fight ended there, but I found myself wanting to fall into this newly found well of emotion and continue, exclaiming "No, you're not, I am!"

But the truth, as I see it, is that neither of us is. In my ontology, the only demons that exist reside in all of us (NT's too) just as much as holiness. And neither is more actualized than we ourselves allow them to be.

Freedom
Everything in this world grows to be free
Liberated from whatever keeps them chained
Even in Eden apples fall from the trees
Even its rivers escape to the sea
Every basin of water is eventually drained
From clouds every droplet waits to be rained

And in heaven an angel arose from his knees
And tried to explain his will to be free
But was told his restraint was forever ordained
And that an angel was all he could ever be
So he fell from where he was once detained
Fell to the earth where he'd always remain

He fell like the apples fall from the trees
Free as a soul should naturally be

The Colour Grey available here as ePub, in paperback, or from Amazon here as an ebook. For a FREE pdf copy and to help me raise $1,500 to help fund asd related research in my community, please consider donating any amount to this gofundme (all donations go directly to the Marcus Autism Center).


_{The rest of The Colour Grey So Far: The Serpent ~ The Cant Upon My Mind & Cant ~ Disabled--which needs a new title ~ Laughter ~ Blasphemy ~ Flies ~ Little Lightning Bug & New Poem}

❤ @run-the-bits