Identify

I identify as a hippie

with a loud mouth

who cries about your crimes

yet is playful, silly, and with hope.

Here is the truth of my ways.

I like wild clothes

and uncommon art, 

enjoy dreaming,

and levity

and discourse.

I read.

I experiment to determine truth.

I play as a way of discovery.

I fight for love over division.

Conformity bores and bothers

and I am certain that tolerance

is the only path to understanding,

the only, yes only

faith with substance.

I see goodness and dream for more

and though I do not do drugs,

I am drugged with a passion

for living

and laughing.

I express myself,

see alternatives to orthodoxy,

and know that both lead to fact

versus fictive and limited

understanding.

I don't wear them

but I pick flowers

and decorate my windows

and heart

and imaginary castles

with their color, scent, and promise.

I love the outdoors,

the smell after rain,

sunlight pouring through the leaves,

and the song of the birds

telling us to really listen

before talking.

I know without doubt

that God does not belong

only to the Christians

as we are all children

of divinity,

all worthy to define

the meaning of our own devotion.

I will not greet another's offences

with violence

because I take all as they are,

some uneducated, maybe,

but mostly just doing 

what others tell them to do

and how to believe.

I study history

to learn the reasons

of the

misguided disillusionment

of the hateful,

their determination to divide,

and their patriarchal

methods of sex,

leadership,

and way of thinking.

Learning and contemplation

are the only way to understand.

I respect all,

invite everyone to my table,

but riot peacefully

if another crosses the line

toward disrespect.

I possess and yell my hope

that, someday,

the rightful coming of love

will burn brighter

than the hateful, judging hearts

frozen in their own iceberg

of their indifference

to the future of our children,

to the Other who is not

like them.

I draw

and write

and scream

against

indifference to poverty,

social divide,

the jailing of the innocent,

the displacement of the minority,

and the teasing of those who differ.

Yet, I understand that such horrors

are born from their own

poor foundations,

untaught awareness,

and undeveloped growth.

Take me

or leave me

but know I am no Snowflake,

but a woman

of hot fire

chanting for a better future

drumming in circles,

playing a native flute,

and dancing in fields of lilacs

and pansies

adoring them

and loving you

whether you accept 

my need to love you

or not.