SCARS

Scars, you say?

You liken them to thorns of a rose?

Oh, my dear, let me reframe those thoughts,

And show you how beauty truly grows.

Thy body is thy temple, they say,

Correct, my body is a sacred display.

It has stained glass windows, vivid and bright,

And when the light shines through, it’s pure delight.

Everyone can see it when you’re open and true,

Committed to vulnerability, your essence shines through.

Your intensity is beauty, deep and profound,

In every scar and window, true grace is found.

Austin Vangelena, MD

08/2024

PROTECTION OF THE LIGHT AND THE DARK

The darkness guards the light so clear,

How would you know what light is, dear,

If you hadn’t felt the darkness near?

Look at the night sky, stars aglow,

They seem so tiny from below.

Yet close up, their grandeur shows.

My unconscious masks slip away,

Revealing fractured selves today.

Let’s crochet them back, make them whole,

Wholeness is where I first stole.

Then a slice was cut from my pie,

Shattered, you see, fragments awry.

Left in pieces, my soul became

Puzzle parts with no clear name.

Oh, how I set you free,

Love sets my fragments free.

Loving myself, I become whole again,

Each piece and slice aware, no longer in vain.

Shame, guilt, doubt—delusions I bore,

Not my own, so why carry more?

Why not set them down, you say,

And walk a lighter path today?

Austin Vangelena, MD

08/18/2024

WHAT LOVE IS?

In Italy, where cobblestones meet,

Fresh bread dances on Tuscany’s breeze, so sweet.

Nicholas, with blue eyes deep and true,

And thick brown brows with blonde streaks in view.

Shaved bald, pondering love’s true face,

Moonlight and cinnamon trees, a soft embrace.

Do you know what love is, you ask with care,

But do you truly know it, or just declare?

Do you grasp what feelings truly mean?

I cried that night, yet you turned away,

I left in sorrow, but you made me stay,

And asked again, “Do you know what love is?”

Shaved bald, pondering love’s true face,

Moonlight and cinnamon trees, a soft embrace.

Do you know what love is, you ask with care,

But do you truly know it, or just declare?

Do you grasp what feelings truly mean?

I cried that night, yet you turned away,

I left in sorrow, but you made me stay,

And asked again, “Do you know what love is?”

---Austin Vangelena, MD

7/27/2024

BIRTHING

In the abyss of darkness, I was born,

Late to witness what I am, forlorn.

The wolf declares it makes me rare,

Yet early on, my beauty was ensnared.

A power I did not recognize,

Oh, my soulmate, I still scent your hands' reprise,

Though eons passed since our souls melody,

Why do you drift? Is it I confined with unconscious masks that need to slip away?

The Gorgon’s gaze I did not know,

Until within, I met my shadow’s glow.

The beauty of my darkened core,

Yet I wield it to free others, not for my hunger, since I've been an herbivore.

The wolves may scorn my path to love,

For liberating others in their night.

But like Michelangelo’s marble stone,

He freed the angel from its lair.

In carving David, did he defy,

Or sculpt the truth with a resolute sigh?

Am I in conflict with my own,

Or merely seeking truth unknown?

Is this the way of the world’s design,

To carve one’s fate through doubt and sign?

In darkness, I seek to understand,

When I love someone I liberate them?

Am I seeing the sculptor's vision, in the angels hand?

Austin Vangelena, MD

08/2024