All too well you play the role the one to teach a lesson…

This is not through intent to teach, but rather your didacticism can be found in your inability to comprehend just what impact you have made.

You hold more power in your hand than you know and to a child it seems a simple flower to crush.

To a flower there is an irrevocable change.

An empty Chair
Clean plates collect dust
Food warming on the stove begins to burn
Candles pooling in forgotten molten wells
Clock ticking

Listening
For car tires in the drive way
For keys clacking
For a knock
For anything

The soufflé has fallen
The condensation on two glasses weeps
The rings that will be left on the table are not thought of
The asparagus wrinkles and is past well done
Hands turn
The wine bottle lightens
Thoughts of throwing dishes
“I’ll be home at seven”

Comes home at seven
In the morning
To a smoke filled kitchen
To a set table
To wicks burned down to hilts
To a melted ice cubes
To dried blackened memories of a once perfectly cooked meal
To carefully folded napkins
To wilted flowers

To an empty house and a still open back door

Pretty flowers fade
Memorial arrangements
Petals drift to stones
Sand in hour glasses falls
Like blooms, live while time abides

Sheet music pages
Played piano for ten years
Dust covered keys wait
Young dreams now yellowed and dry
Old stiff fingers can bend still

Petrichor notes hang
Glassy pavement cracks glisten
Rose buds bloom softly
Memory does not wash out
Yet more than dust rinses past

Have you ever seen a bright eyed
Glowing person
Sober three years
Pull a dime bag out of her purse

It may have been three years
But the person reflected back up at her
From that small mirror
Is not the person in front of you;
It’ll be the same person she was three years ago
It’ll reflects her long forgotten face, but also will be a window into her own personal rock bottom
It is a hotel room key to a tailor made suite in a town she never should have visited
This is not the face she dreamed of growing up to see reflected in her astronaut helmet
Her self-image disappointingly is only eclipsed by passing streetlights
And not the skylines of glitter scattered on the earth’s outline
It would have been a beautiful circumspective background
But she can’t look from aircraft window microscopes now
Now she sits viewing the world through city bus window magnifying glasses
And she worked hard to get here
She earned her urban lab coat and degree from the harsh alleyway lessons
And a life path of two steps forwards one step back
And three here forwards
And a few more back
And really
It’d be a shame to wear out a perfectly good pair of shoes to make this journey all for not

Don’t get in my way.
Let’s put it modestly…
I will destroy you.

Dear _
Even if we don’t get along
Really ever
I want you to knowthis
I still think you are a great person
One full of life and potential

Maybe had I said something different
we would have gotten along better
I want to say sorry
I wish things had gone better...

Sincerely,
Me

Dear __
I know you want to help the world
but no matter how big your smile is
your hands are only so big.
Keep you chin up
keep smiling that beautiful smile
I know that glow in your eyes when you smile
is enough to help some people.
Don’t stop caring about people
just preserve yourself
You can’t help anyone
if you are the one
most in need
of your own help and guidance

Sincerly,
Me

Dear _
if you are reading this
take these letters
show them to the world
there are things I never had the right moment
or never had the nerve  
everyone in my life has greatly impacted me
I want him or her to know it.

These letters do not have names
these people will know if it was written for them
I want all people to find one that I wrote for them  
I started writing these for specific people
    I realized the things I had to say were not only for this person
         these are things I would like people like them to hear

If you feel I wrote this for you
I did.
And if you know I wrote this for you
I hope you like it and know how much you mean to me

Sincerely
Me

Let me tell you a bit about me
A bit that I haven’t told anyone

Here goes nothing…

I listen to Lady Gaga
A lot
The smell of whiskey doesn’t burn my nose
Rather it smells familiar, similar to maple syrup
I love to dance a lot when no one is looking
And really provocatively
I doubt my ability
Yet fear my potential
I kissed a boy in first grade
But don’t know why I have literally hid this all my life
The book “Charley and the Chocolate Factory” changed me
And I never like chocolate until this year
I am afraid of dogs
I grew up with dogs all of my life
I really dislike my arms from the elbow up
But play off my flannel shirts and hoodies as a fashion statement
I bite my nails but not nervously
Rather because nail clippers make my nails feel weird
I watch ****…
No one really admits that one but most of us do
I love not washing my hair
But I hate going out in public that way
I love most people but pretend I don’t
It’s easier that way
I love the feeling of crumbling sheet rock
Especially if it is wet
I have cussed since I was probably 7…
I think I cuss less now than I did in fifth grade
I generally admire those farthest from me
They are what I’ll never be
I could see myself as president
But just as easily a stripper
I have to try really hard not to cry when I think of my childhood
Especially young memories
I have tweezed my eye brows
And my toes
I have worn makeup while no one was home
Mainly just to try it
I love eating raw sugar
Especially chewing it
I am pretty sure I was delusional as a child
But sometimes I feel like either I wasn’t or I still am
I don’t feel like people ever really know me
Especially my family

There is a chunk of me
Please don’t waste it

I really should want to be here
This impending dread of tomorrow isn’t normal
I claw at my back
Push on my ribs and try
Try to collapse in and maybe just maybe
Concentrating and compacting who I am will make
Me
Clearer and more easily understood
And while my ribs jab my heart and my spine claws my stomach
It is a joyous reminder I have both
My head hurts and my hair falls in front of my eyes
I am just hoping my seams
Are better sown than those of my fading sneakers
Thread bare and fraying I fear coming undone
I don’t want to unravel and be a pile of string
But a ball of yarn is less out of place in this scene than my face

I need change
I don’t want it
Not like you seek comfort
No I seek only survival and change is a necessity to mine
Anyone who has known me long knows this
I constantly cut my hair and change its colors
Wear new things and change the things I have
I am a flowing gypsy not tethered to any place
But no matter how hard I try my personal change holds no grasp on the world’s around me

I am not nor will I ever be
A reflection of the world around me
No matter how I wish and try
I cannot mold the world to reflect the ball of yarn inside of me
I do not hate who I am
I wish not to conform and change who I am
Rather the world to shift its view so what’s inside me wasn’t so foreign and strange
I wish I wanted to be here
I wish I longed to see your faces
But when I take a leave of absence I don’t seek to return
I can take vacations but these journeys are only a reminder of the world that I have to come home to
Not a refreshing break to prepare me to return

There are too many noose filled closets
And too many plastic faces
I wish I didn’t have to face everyone around me as if I was the part of themselves they hate
I wish I wasn’t a target
But I would not change the reminder that I have become
That red flag in the fog in this place that shows people a piece of themselves they tried to bury
I will not change me
I will not change you
But in this twisted backwards world
My refusal to be someone else is a threat to your attempts to be
And I jeopardize your sinking ship of an image you have tried to build

And I am sorry
Not sorry that I force you to no longer deny your identity
I am purely sorry that I live in a world that I have that ability
I am sorry that me and you and everyone sit here
Yet I still am the only one with the power
The only one set upon the task of telling you
That you are human

Well…
Life is or was a box of chocolates
Right?
And me and you
We took it on
It was perfect
I hated milk chocolate
And you loved it
And you hated those coconut ones
But I really liked them
And it all worked so well
Not a chocolate left uneaten or unsavored
Until one day we found a coconut filled milk chocolate

In ant populations
Worker ants are blind  
Follow one another by scent
Pheromones are released from their feet
Leaving a scent trail from the next to follow
A single file line
Blindly trusting pheromones

Sometimes an ant loses the scent though
And wanders off looking for the trail
Leading the others off behind him
And if he looks hard enough
He’ll find the end of his own line
And follow the tail of a train
He created
Subsequently creating what is scientifically known as
    a Death Spiral

For these blind ants are unaware
They are following the same path over and over
It does not lead anywhere
It does not lead home
Eventually they walk until
They walk no more…

Pheromone- “any chemical substance released by an animal that serves to influence the physiology or behavior of other members of the same species.”
Originates from the Greek phérein and that means to bear or bring and Hormone

Many people say that love
Is a chemical reaction
A perfect blend of pheromones
To produce attraction
Affection
And in the end reproduction
Love was
Scientifically disjointed
To fit better on a slide
Linguistically altered
To fit better on paper

But isn’t love just pheromones?
Like it is to the ants
Attractive footsteps
We blindly follow
Even if they lead us to no good

Most times Love leads us home
Leads us to prosper
Tells us where to go
What to do
To survive
Until it doesn’t…

Then our pheromone path
Leads us in circles
It leads around and around
Love can lead us in a death spiral
And if we are blind we will not step out
Step out of the path:
That winding circling path of doom
Made up of previous mistake we have made
That left attractive footsteps in their wake
Footsetps that when we go lost we again found
And now we choose to blindly repeat them
Over and over
In the pursuit of Love

Because of **Pheromones

I’ve got a jar
Full of little slips of paper
Little happy moments
All the good things
I write down
On purple slips of paper
And put them in this jar
And save’em for a rainy day

I wish it didn’t look so
Empty
Wish there wouldn’t be so
Much Rain

I kinda wish I had you
Written on a purple
Slip of paper
I kinda wish
I didn’t wish so much

You could probably fill the open space
And make my jar look full
You could probably sit quite comfortably
In a sea of happy notes

But I fear the color purple
May grow dull and sad
For it isn't a pretty color
When it’s the only one

I fear you’re not a fish
Happy in a glass bowl
I fear I cannot keep you
In a jar just for me

For while the sun
Hides in the rain
You will glow just fine
But who would I be
To keep the sun mine

So I kinda wish...
I kinda wish…
I didn’t wish…
This on you

So I guess I’ll write your name
On a different card
And hang it in the outside
Let the world greet you
And not keep you all to me

I’ll keep on writing purple notes
And fill my jar
And maybe when I need you less
You’ll want to come inside

I can't imagine why
A person can take a life...
A life of someone they didn't know
A life that has barely been lived

I can't imagine how
You can look at the face of a child
And not see prospect
Aspiration
Potential
A life yearning to spring forth
and live...

I can't imagine
Taking a life
After seeing their
Face
Not once...
Not twenty times...

I can see the man in the moon tonight
I could never see a face in the craters before
I just simply thought it was something people invented
In an attempt to personify what we don’t have a connection to
A giant face in the sky is more comforting on a cold night
More comforting then a reflective rock
Maybe I was right and so there isn’t really a face
Maybe I just need to see that face tonight
That face to tell me goodnight and that I can try again tomorrow

My room’s vacancy pools into a dense silence
Like an estate open house or thrift store:
Evidence of people once being here
Without those people still being there

A small lamp braves the dark of my room
Daring to edge its toes into the dark water around
I tell it to just jump on in
The water’s nicer once you adjust to it

My hands ***** out into my empty bed sheets
There is a silver lining in here somewhere, there must me
Maybe it’s just too dark for me to see it
I guess I’ll wait until the morning

I never really understood
Slam poetry
There was a man, a mic, and a spot light
There were words put on paper and words said
There was an eb and flow and there was this rhythm
Everyone seemed to speak the same
Getting faster getting slower
Getting higher getting lower
And there were profound words whispered over coffee cups
Obscuring the chocolate drizzled over latte’s foam
It seemed odd and foreign
Until I became a slam poet
After all I think it’s how they say
You never know a man until you walk a mile in his shoes
But it’s because I used to look at those words they said and
Over analyzed them
Over scrutinized them
I filed them
Color coded them
Cross reference and proof read them
1+1 had to equal 2 but with slam
It equaled like eight
And I could double check again and again
I couldn’t get 1+1 to equal two

But it was because at that time I was a straight A student
Reading seven books at one time
And doing thinks like science fair projects for fun
Because I had realize,
even without knowing I had
That if I was up to the rims of my glasses with books and papers
I couldn’t see my life around me
I paid less attention to the dishes I had to clean if I had equations running through my mind
I never saw how much dad drank if I was reading and writing
I took all those gold stars and straight A’s and plastered them over the cracks in my life
I joined everything I could
I did choir
I did drama
I was the editor of the year book
I did extra credit and went overboard on home work
I made my projects with blood, sweat, and tears
And my academics were my life...
But soon the time came that I got a B

And it didn’t fit quite as cleanly over the hole in my roof I used it to patch
And I didn’t shine bright enough to block out the darkness
And I began to see
A simple column of letters
Two letters
6 A’s and one B
If put it under a microscope it would be made out of the same black ink spatter on pulverized and pressed trees
It would still bleed the same if I dripped water on it
But it was different
Darker it seemed
And at night it didn’t lull me to sleep as well as
An A
It was only 80%
Not my usual hundred and with
less zeroes it couldn’t block out the
sound of my surroundings as well an A could
I couldn’t wrap myself in it and hide
I couldn’t click my heals and have it take me to a happy place
No
It was a B

And I plastered my report cards over my cracked old windows
But there was now a hole where my B would have been

Light leaked in through there
Light that shown on my house
Casting a shadow down on the floor
And the gold star and sticker coated family looked fine standing before me
But the shadow silhouettes were of scary people
Hurt people

And I never saw it all along because a smiley face with bright purple letters saying thing like
“GOOD JOB!”
“GREAT WORK!”
“EXELLENCE!”
Had been neatly peeled from perfect tests
And as gently as it was lifted it was placed onto my family’s faces
The stickers stuck because of their tears
The tears that no longer existed
once hidden by a sticker
I then began to see that the light from outside could show me the world
I then went and stripped my wall and windows
Of reports cards, essays, and projects
I shut off my computer with power points of greatness
Flipping slide
after slide
    after slide

I then opened my windows let air and light flood into my room
And it showed me things
Beautiful things

But then the light flooded into the rest of my house
The breeze became a draft and invaded the rooms
Illuminating the ugliness and hurt

And I tried to shut that window
I tried to glue back up the papers
I tried to sow back together ripped up gold stars

But I was not fast enough
Me
like Pandora
tried closing that box again

What was done…
Was done

It was too late
I saw it all, if only briefly
And now that room full of academic tokens of my achievement
Seemed darker
Even with the windows open
It was darker
Light shown in
A dusky twilight
At noon
And my heart beat faster
My breath quickened
My scream scratched at my throat
Trying to get out but not finding a foot hold
It just clawed and kicked
And on an intake of breath that scream lost its hold
And fell back down my throat
Landing in the pit of my stomach

I then walked out of my room and into my house and looked at my family
I saw the ugly stickers on their face
And peeled them off
Without care and in a haste
I was frantic
And desperate
And afraid
Under those paper adhesive masks
I didn’t recognize the faces
And now I was in a house full of family I had never gotten to know and I was afraid
Not like a scary movie
Not like a dark basement
More like being on a stranded island
Watching a cell phone with service
Get carried away by a seagull

I then looked to see the panic mirrored
In my “families” faces and didn’t find it

I then walked back to my room
And cried myself to sleep
In the dusky twilight
At noon

And when I awoke I found a composition notebook
And a pencil…

I could smell your polo cologne from a mile away…

It wasn’t an overpowering smell but I knew it was coming
Even before I could smell it
I can still remember walking to the shower and passing by your room
Fumes drifting out like the vapor in a Hollister doorway
Only the dark clothing store was never as inviting as your room
Not in a comforting way, like a quaint house or camp fire invites you closer
                But in the way that apple invited Eve
   As if to say… “I dare you”

I will never hear jingle bells the same
Or be able to listen to Mac Miller without your voice singing in my head
Because it was so annoying having you loudly sing at the side of my head
But now it’s quiet, too quiet
Your croaking voice isn’t mutilating the symphony of car horns and street noises any more
I realize now however I preferred the musical chaos of having you hang out with me

This is not a love poem
This is a…
This is an…
This is an I guess I know how I feel too late poem
An I guess I should have said this poem

But without the absence of something we often don’t realize what it meant to us

You’re gone…
Not dead, you didn’t leave me, not a dramatic departure
You were forced to move
Due to your own stupid actions

After all I guess it was me who told you the reason to stay in a certain place can’t be a person

I would eat my words in my sleep if I could, because my common logic won’t allow it
but in my dreams I will; in my dreams I have a hopeless side of me, not counting every tick in a day to make sure it still runs the same as all the others, unlike the waking me does

But when I wake up those words still hang in the air and I realize they were best left said anyways

I think I wish I had said good bye
But with one too many letters un-replied to, I wouldn’t know how to say it
Because I don’t know which you to say good bye to
The you sitting in the hall with me at midnight
                The you who’s face drifts a little too close to mine
The you who can cry and admit he isn’t perfect
The you who knocks over stuff and makes a mess when we are cooking
The you who holds a stapler over his chest saying “dare me”
The you pretending he doesn’t know me
Or the one pretending that he hates me
I saw your many faces and don’t know which one to say goodbye to

So it’s probably best no good bye was said at all but I still feel unresolved
You stick to me, like a burr or a thorn
This feeling that I could have done more
I could have told you how beautiful you were so you wouldn’t try too hard to fool people into thinking it
Because your price tags and diet made you look appealing to some but not me

No… I was drawn to your eyes and how they always match your shirt
Your chipped tooth framed in your goofy smile
The laugh that escaped your nervous lips as you say something I know you don’t tell most people

I wish I could have told you it was going to be okay:
You would be okay if you learned who you was
It would get better if you stopped trying so hard
You can’t help your ****** orientation so you need not hide
You don’t have to hate yourself because you think some people hate you
Because some people didn’t and you made them want to try…

In ways I was an improved vision of yourself
And you were an improved vision of myself

If only I could run the football field, be attractive, be cool
Have people wanting me and wanting to be me
If only you were confident in who you were, able to sing, dance and express yourself,
Have people trust you and see that you aren’t afraid of judgment

But I’m not you and you aren’t me, I smell like trees and you smell like Polo
I am not afraid of myself, and you are
I try to be honest and you try to be someone else
I am still standing here and you aren’t…

I tried to wrap my fingers around the world once
  But like trying to have a finger in every cup of cupcake pan:
I couldn’t
I ended up with handfuls of soils and clouds swirling through my fingertips

So I decided to get a different goal
I would traced every star with my fingertips
Lying on my back in a field I saw them all
Making dot to dot pictures in the constellations spilled before me
Each star I traced had two more coming after it and the numbers never ended

Did you know some of the stars we see aren’t even still lit?
They burned out yet still their light travels too us from light years away
A lake I heard about in Montana has crystal clear waters
Though you can see the water’s floor it is still incredibly deep
The shallow look of seeing every pebble is simply an illusion
I wish the sky were like that
The stars could look closer, feel warmer, despite their distance

Maybe I only wish that because the thought of space makes me uncomfortable
I like to think that this is up
And that is down
but the world’s not flat
It’s quite sadly round

My night is day in another place,
on this earth
What time is it on mars, on pluto, on planets we don’t know about?
How small are we really in the grand spectrum of it all?

Because I assure you if you dropped a grain of sand into a bag of rice you could find it
If you tried and tried and tried
And looked at every grain of rice
We are here, we can be found in it all
But we have hid ourselves in blankets of space
And wrapped ourselves in other stars to make us hard to find

You were wrong about me…

You were
Wrong
About me

And I am glad I realize this now
Because you would never have been the one to admit it
And now I am done
You gave me nothing
Except snide remarks

You never had a good thing to say
        Never had a kind word leave your lips
  That is until it was greased with black velvet

Then and only then
They pour out, slurring and sloshing
Like the last drink before bed

Only your words don’t come with ice
Like your ***** have to

But some times
More often than not
No words are said at all

For more than a year at times
Nothing was said

No Happy birthday
No merry Christmas
And least of all
A Hello

So now that I have spent time without you
Out of earshot
I am starting to see how wrong you were
But I am also seeing you for who you are
You are no longer the reflection
Looking up at me in the broken glass
                              I had to swept up from the floor
You aren’t the spontaneous, Unreliable
Dad who goes out and buys a sailboat

No instead I see who you really are

Hurt, Scared, Defensive
Only you can’t raise a child  at arm’s length
I can relate to your child hood
After all I too know what its like to try and sift pearls of wisdom from the fountain of inebriated words pouring from a parents mouth
Maybe I just got better at it than you
It takes time and you generally just end up with handfuls of ash but every once in a while you see the shimmery white bead of wisdom standing out from its dark surroundings



I do not
In anyway
Condone what you did
Do
But there comes a point that I realized
Part of where our relationship being muddled messed up and painful falls to me
It is not my fault you did what you did
But it was mine that I expected any different
  A bad night
  Ending in tears
  Harsh words and slammed doors
  And profuse apologies the next morning
  The usual every other court mandated weekend
None of which my fault
But the four-hour car ride home
In which I usually decided to forgive you...
     That was
I should have never believed after the second or    
    third time that things would change
After the eighth or ninth
    Or when I lost count
I gave you second chance after second chance
Hoping one day that old ugly saying wouldn’t be true when I woke up the next morning

That saying being:
“I have three priorities
*****
Smokes
And my truck”

I guess I can’t fault you for being honest but when you said sorry and you looked so sincere is when I wanted your honesty to come through while in actuality that’s where it faltered

So it’s not worth me holding a grudge
Getting back and trying to get even

When you hold in all of that poison it hurt you more  
  than who you hold the grudge against

So
   You were wrong about me
I thought you should know and one day if you don’t yet, you will see that
One day I will look back and see how wrong you were but not resent you for it
It's when I realized this I started to forgive you
It may not be okay what happened
But I will be okay so I can’t waist myself on being angry, it only hurts me


So you know what dad

I forgive you

Sitting
Watching the rain fall down
The soft cushions I sit on absorb me
My eyes track the glistening drops that
Race down the glass in front of me
My breath fogs on the window
Looking down on it, it reflects a rainbow

Something that on another day
I would find beautiful
Any other day

My hand opens and closes still empty
My other rests in my hair

The cracked cement darkens with the rain
Glistening and reflecting the golden foliage above
One large puddle in the middle of the street
Holds a sun above treetops
On the ground below their trunks

The sun is clear as it often is in the mornings
Like a glass of water, cool, crisp and transparent
Despite the rain
No children run in the streets
Puddles left unsplashed
One tricycle sits
Yellow and red plastic too wet to sit on
A shoe floats in a puddle
Pink laces fray pink leather fades

The room I sit in is almost silent
My heartbeats and a shallow breath
This is the loudest room in the house

Diamonds and squares of light
Spill farther into the room as the sun rises
A gently tipping bucket of stained glass
My body is exhausted
The calm after a storm
Sadness soothing muscles clenched from anger the night before
Breathe in
Breathe out
Steady slow
My tears slow
Stop
And dry


Warm memories
Laying in the grass
Sun glancing off my freckles
What’s not to smile about?

But sitting in a dark room with the lights off
Simply because no one is here would need them on
But me
Not quite as warm

But in the darkness
Other senses flourish
Music is that much more beautiful
Textures have more vibrancy than before
So while that dark is a reminder of being alone
It’s a way to better experience that moment
A better way to see the person who is in the room

You aren’t alone when your with you
And that dim light makes you hear your heart beat
Feel every fiber of your hair

You are perfect
Perfection with flaws
Like home cooked food or handmade art

I stand up from those cushions
I run my fingers through my unbrushed hair
And see that I need to stop looking at that window

I need to stop waiting for something
And start doing something

I hate goodbyes
Yet they are the only measurement
Of my eternal life
For the seasons blur together
Only punctuated by farewells

Many goodbyes ago
I did not measure time in this way
I did not see a blur behind me
But a path ahead of me
That was before the darkness

Sun dances on my skin
Scatters through the leaves
Paints flower petals
Then a cloud covered the sun
Cool hands grasped me
I lost the air with which to scream

He was not who I saw my life with
Time is capricious character
For now I can’t see a life without him


Time…
It has changed me
Once a maiden of flowers
Now a matriarch of death

I have lived many lives
Played many roles
And yet it would seem live
Is a strong word

To be alive one must be born
This I have done twice
One side of me birthed from my mother
One side of me reborn
From the heart of a pomegranate

To live one must at some point die
Without dark light is not light
Without warmth there is no cold
There must be the opposition
To create identity

Without winter there is no summer
The change of the two a constant in my life
Unlike time that is counted by its running out
I live a life measured by transition

My grandmother always said
“The way into a person’s heart is through their stomach”
I keep replaying that lesson over in my mind
Tracing the flowers on the edge of this plate
I ask myself what tempting poison must have been fed to you
To make the three hours I spent on this lasagna not enough

I once thought of taking my life but the thought of all the people I needed to help kept me here
An act of complete selflessness
An act of complete selfishness
I cannot live my life for other people; it is not fair to them
Nor is it fair to me
If you keep drinking from a well
It will run dry
If you keep whittling a tree
It will be only a stump
I am not a bottomless wealth of help
I too have begun to run dry
But I refuse to choose the path of martyrdom
I will not teach a lesson learned by my absence
A person lost is missed most when left unresolved
I don’t want to be a case of what could have been said
…What should have been said

I give 100 percent of me and get back none
As an act of self-preservation I must brick over the mouth of this well
For I have grown weary of one way streets
I would give it all to you
And you can’t even spare a thing for me
I don’t ask for your pity or your hand outs
I may stand on the street and sing
But not to fill my cup with coins
But to sing
Today I must look at this street corner differently
For if I sang for change and received no coins
I would move to another corner
I know you will remember me
I know you ‘re changed by me
But I only wish I was ever presently important
For a friend who is seen as important in hindsight
Is a friend who is already gone
So I give you one last chance
I am here
I am now
Do not waste me
For I will go to another corner soon
And this time to sing for change
Because my throat has grown weary
I can no longer sing to you just simply to sing to you