ingress and egress
or
egress and ingress
when you came out of the womb did you know the difference between east and west, north and south? 
were you created with an innate sensibility of the cardinal directions?
did you emerge a cartographer?
Magellan, is that you?
sometimes i cannot discern
where i'm ending or if i begun
i got to the end of a degree hung in an ornate frame to emphasize my newly gained admission to elitism
only to see that that end was the beginning of stuck
active actions led me to passivity doubled over
i got to the top of the Rocky stairs but felt like no champ
i stood on the summit of societal perceived american dreams
an apex glowering over the masses in Baisley
and every other NYCHA village akin
over the people who let their deprivations warp into excuses for being less
perched on a pinnacle that felt like pure distress
worked so hard for that ingress
or was it an egress?
because unhappiness book-ended point A and point C
because obtaining a goal was nothing at all like i was told it would be
and along the way vision got blurred preventing me from seeing
or better yet, being
what if all along i had the map in my gut?
that urge, that pull
GPS that defies reason
vision was blurred because sight is no prereq
pure gravitational emotion is no defect
but in fact the compass on which i ought to rely
i was born with a route
i just allowed the world to let me deviate

until now