#ShapingIdentities

Years passed without love,
loneliness the eternal companion
followed me and brooked
no mercy in its magnificence.

Music accompanied my mood
when I found the language
of heavy metal through the Gods
know as Metallica and their desolation
song "Fade to Black." I never looked
back to the world without tainted
glasses to know I belonged to outsiders.

Thrash awakened my love of metal,
even as I wandered alone full of resentment.
Suicidal Tendencies met and helped
alleviate the ideation a fraction.
Megadeth showed me the snarling
anger that replaced the love never given.

Denied the right to grow long hair,
I waited to be able to headband
as the metal Gods until later in life.
Through it all, heavy metal gave
me a home amongst the others
society rejected with a musical
cast unparalleled in modern times.
For they descended from Mozart,
Beethoven, and Vivaldi in majesty.
The lesson learned: class, ethnicity,
sex, and gender mattered not.
It's all about the emotions felt
and expressed that created the brethren of metal.

© Hesher John