Don’t Save Your Breath: Revolutionary IMprov Prose

Through the years, I’ve had many friends, you included, who have told me positive things about me. They said kind, wonderful things, even when I argued with them, even when I didn’t believe them, even when it was obvious that I was exhausting them with my negativity and self-pity. They kept telling me wonderful thoughts:
I was good, I was smart, I was kind, I was important, I was intelligent, I was attractive, I was cute, I was an eccentric genius, someday I’d find my tribe and they’d get me.
and many other positive affirmations.
At the time these things were told me, I didn’t believe them. Sometimes I had to hear them many times, but finally I reached a place in my life where I realized that those things could be, might be, possibly may be, true. I accepted them, held on to them, carried them deep in my heart and my soul. They gave me hope. They prompted me and prodded me to keep trying, keep believing, keep hoping.
When I finally decided to take the leap out of self-pity and self-loathing, realizing that I could be someone worthwhile, the memory of all those positive comments came flooding back to me and substantiated me and reinforced me.

You face people who don’t believe you when you tell them how wonderful they are. It seems that you could repeat yourself until you are blue in the face, and they would never believe you. It seems like a waste of time.
So should you save your breath?
That fabulous, articulate, insightful, intelligent, kind breath?
No. Please no!

Bidding Adieu And Starting Anew: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Free Verse

How do I bid adieu
To a life
And a lifestyle
I’ve lived
For years?

It was never comfortable.
Too Often
it was not pure,
nor holy,
nor of good report.
Rarely was it
praiseworthy.

It was not
Where I needed
Or wanted
To be.

At last,
here I am,
at the edge
of potential new paths,
rising out of the muck
and mire of the past.

New vistas,
new visions,
new opportunities
are spread out before me,
inviting me,
filling me with hope
and belief:

I CAN do this!

And yet…
I don’t know how
to step away.
I’m afraid I’ll lose
my shoe,
Stuck
In the past’s muck.

Then I recall Him.
He asks me to change.
He will lift me
up
and out;
Place my unshod feet
On paths He has traveled,
to places He has gone.

I believe
that when I’ve walked
His paths,
barefoot,
long enough to have worn
all the muck from my feet,
they will be shod
through His Grace
and Mercy
with righteousness,
And I will be purified
and able
to be
in the vistas
I can now only
dimly
see.