No Days of Wine and Roses
By Timothy J. Muise

There are no days of wine and roses in my world; only tiresome periods of rancid water and wilted hedgerows. Memories of better times are as if bars of gold to my lonesome soul. Sentenced Zombies pace the walkways of my purgatory and I shuffle in behind lost in my own trance of disillusion.

Braggadocio begins to make my ears bleed and ignorance personified is a stinging acid to my blurry eyes. Lead boots with which I walk carry me in labor from one meaningless act to the next; a rusted gerbil wheel of hopelessness. No rehabilitation in my range of vision, only a stark view of the walking dead. Graves fill with the hearts of men defeated; hopeless and hollow.

Somewhere from a place inside my frail vessel of flesh a murmuring of strength wells up, slowly at first but building an ever steady momentum. It awakens a vibrant beast with sharp vision and blazing foresight. Strong wings sprout from my wide back and taught muscles expand on my calves as I leap toward the walls that cage me. Over the concertina wire I fly claws tearing at the perimeter of my hell as I depart. Soaring free - sweet victory!

To know hell is to know that heaven exists. Sweet wine and fragrant roses truly do dwell outside the misery of the modern day gulag. You can break free from the prison of the heart and concrete will crumble, steel will bend, and the cage that once held the man superior will be only a thing of a distant past. No prison can hold our potential when we realize it and break it loose. God wills it.

For me the challenge of the system is a must, it is who I am, or who I am destined to be. I am that man that the oppressor fears as it is who God intended me to be. The Victory is mine and I share it with you as you are me - forgiven.