He’s broken promises and lifetime regrets.
He might not win daddy of the year,
he spends his evenings and early mornings wishing he could’ve been a better father.  He’s not a role model,
he made mistakes.
He smoked the things he couldn’t,
he forgot the things he shouldn’t.
He’s so much more.
A leader
an army of youth at his side,
spiting fire that he lit the flame to.
He opened the doors to our poetry,
letting us become the people who we are and what we want.
I never liked having my work judged continuously, until I met him.
His judgement is not for life or death
, it’s for the words I could never speak unless I wrote them.
  A friend,
with the best advice,
a man with a past is a man with experience.
  He can tell you all about late, hazy nights in smoke-filled hotel rooms and polite crack heads in Portland, Maine.
  A man,
willing to address his mistakes and send them flying back to their rightful place,
the past.
He’s the toughest man I know and the only father-figure I like to look up to.
He is.
A role model.
Because,
contrary to popular understanding, a past of mistakes leads to a future of knowledge.
  If I become half the man he is,
I’ll know I’ve lived my life as a good man.
  I can see passion in every word as a slightly under-confident man shoots bullets with poetic lines that can make a room,
pretty **** quiet.
Most doesn’t see him like I do.
  They see tattoos and “*******’s” and assume he a part of the lost youth.  
They’ll never know he’s the compass leading us out of the cave of darkness.
I see a man who smokes too much because he cares for every poet who steps to a mic.
  I see broken promises and lifetime regrets.
He’s all of those things but,
in reality.
He’s.
So.
Much.
More.