Myself When I am Real

By Al Young

      For Charles Mingus

The sun is shining in my backdoor
right now.
                             I picture myself thru jewels
the outer brittleness gone as I
fold within always.     Melting.

Love of life is love of God
sustaining all life,
                                       sustaining me
when wrong or un-self-righteous
in drunkenness & in peace.

                                                            He who loves me
is me. I shall return to Him always,
my heart is rain, my brain earth,
but there is only one sun & forever
it shines forth one endless poem
of which my ranting, my whole life
is but breath.

                              I long to fade back
into this door of sun forever

“Myself When I am Real” from The Blues Don’t Change: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1982 by Al Young. Used by permission of Louisiana State University Press.