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Lauren Smith Aug 2012
I’m gold-blooded,
And my cheeks hot.
I’m running highly alcoholic stakes,
On account of this bourbon I bought.
I drink that Kentucky like I’m old money.
Just shoot it down.
Why not?
You’ll be pleasantly surprised by what comes of a five-second flash of bravery more oft than not.
So here’s one for the rebel blood in you, and the rebel blood in me.
May sweet Whiskey Courage set us free.
Don't blame me, I live south of the Mason-Dixon line. Whiskey Courage is lore.
Lauren Smith Aug 2012
I wonder if I'll ever make something of my dreams.
What if I don't?
What if I die?

What if I end up having poured all my living into this escapism?
Everyone tells me not to think of these things.
They tell me to not “think so morbidly”
They say I'm 'just seventeen'.

So therefore I cannot die?
So I should throw a ******* parade in my reckless ignorance,
And I should do what most of us do,
Pretend that death isn’t stalking us every. ****. day,
Pretend that I am promised tomorrow so I can afford to procrastinate today?

Maybe we’re ahead of the game if we accept this fact now.
So hell yeah, I’m seventeen.
And I’m forcing myself to face the truth you chose to dance around.

At first you’ll be dizzy
From the moment you realize the world doesn’t revolve around you.
When your mind starts to settle and the reticence dissipates,
Everything you’ve kept hushed up for so long suddenly seems to be screaming at you.

You won’t be able to handle it,
It’s a taste and tolerance that you never acquired
And so you go mad, and then you’ll turn into a poet.
Not out of skill, nor choice – but necessity.
I need you as much as you need me.
You’d have to be mad to be an artist,
You’d have to be mad to create poetry.
Lauren Smith Aug 2012
Aren’t we both brothers in the breed of Cain?
You should be able to sympathize with this pain, right?
Or maybe, by now, my mask has rendered me unrecognizable.
And yours too.
We’d probably walk right past each other in the streets.
We’ve probably walked right past each other in the streets and never knew.
Lauren Smith Aug 2012
Here’s what is, what once was, and what will be.
I am what ‘held up’.
I am autumn tree after the fall of its last leaf,
I am volcanic ash dusted over the ruins of a city.
It may not look it, but I will once again breathe evident life,
For the best part of me is still here, I did not die.

I am the parts of me that survived tragedy,
Murdered the imposters,
Cut out the tumor.
Let me bleed.

Reasoning stretched to boundary,
And as gaping tears rip into being, you see me.
War-torn as ever,
I do not eat, I do not sleep.

Oh! But how I dream!
Dreaming of all the dreams indebted to me by Reality.
But in the blinding light of a child run free,
I didn’t realize my speed.

All the best parts of me,
Born of the fight to conquer what got thrown at me,
Now lie in the suffocating dirt of this cemetery.
Try as I might to resist what is, my washed eyes burn thinking of what once was,
For I know –this is all that will ever be.

The light I had,
Choked out,
Extinguished by the grave.
I always thought I’d live to dream another day.

What a fool I was,
“The best part of me is still here, thus I cannot die.”
Now I recall the years I neglected food and I neglected sleep.
Though I kick and cry, as I am dragged into this permanent sleep,
I know, this is repayment for a life deprived.

Now I know,
If you do not sleep, you cannot dream.
Here lies “the best part of me”,
Asleep in this coffin, it too did die.
I'm not a poet, I never intended to write. I am a lover of poetry, I wanted to read. But I think I became greedy and wanted to be part of everyone else's beauty.

— The End —