"graduations" poems
How many chairs have we parked ourselves on,
side by side
in these 6,205 days of marriage?
Side by side at our wedding reception
principals’ offices
school graduations
courtrooms
funerals
new baby nurseries
counselors’ offices
new cars and
bars.
In lawn chairs
pews
rockers
couches
backseats and
airline seats.
The size and shapes of the imprints
we leave behind
changing over time.
The faces of others seated with us coming and going.
Always, we have tried to leave a trail of love,
like the slime of slugs and snails.
And for each other, an extra measure.
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 6:32 PM UTC
Children only grow up
when adults
aren't watching.
Father dear-
*(I learnt how to ride a bike without your hands keeping me steady.
I’ll learn how to live without your name on my conscience when I’m given away at graduations, at award ceremonies, at marriage.)*
-it's far too late to
want me back now.
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 6:35 PM UTC
Tonight is a cluster of
Recognitions, remembrances
Mostly reminiscence
Which sift in the breeze
Gusting beneath the temporary
Tarpaulin tent
Backs are slapped
Arms embraced
Smiles predominate
As shiny faces and gleaming foreheads
Illuminated by flashing cameras
Twinkle like fireflies displaying
In a muggy June meadow
Photos pulled from stained
Billfolds move from hand to hand
Displaying glossies of babies, graduations
Weddings and “The big catch”
Relatives, friends and officials
Find their place on folded metal chairs
For a wedding ceremony
Tonight has become a gathering
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 8:46 AM UTC
In my family mental illness isn’t a question of
“Will I or won’t I?”
It’s a question of
“When and how badly?’
Because in my family mental illness isn’t a question
It’s a promise
It’s a promise that you hope someone will break
And you realize that life after 20 isn’t a guarantee
Because it’s a question of
“Will I bury my parents or will my parents bury me?”
Because if the mental illness doesn’t **** you
It’ll be the cancer
Or the diabetes
Or maybe the heart disease
But in my family making it to 80 is something
Only two people have seen
And you learn to stop asking questions
And in my family
You learn to laugh while you can
And to smile in the rain
To drink while it’s legal
And to die at inconvenient times
Like before weddings
And graduations
And birthdays
And you learn to stop asking whose coming
And stop sending out invitations
And just hope someone is alive to see you
Dying
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 1:52 AM UTC
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
New birthdays new babi es
Marriages are graduations:
Promotions for bachelors & bacheloerettes
A new morning gone
I'm moving on, I'm moving on
A death, a crash, a disease
Goodbye Sparky, goodbye
Births followed by deaths followed by
Commercial breaks, cups of coffee and
back to more happy, happy
birthdays.
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 8:15 PM UTC
There is no place for me here
Where they dream of comfortable lives
Talk about football and weekend plans
Holding hands as they walk down aisle four
Split the grocery bill then drive home to his place
That will someday become their home
And oh how we wanted to travel and see things
Skydive, mountain climb
Travel to Africa, build houses, learn languages
And just be
But then that job offer was too good to pass up
And it’s so much easier to raise a kid with family close by
So we put it off for now
Just for now, for a little while
Until the timing is right
Until we have more money, vacation days
Then there was the new car, the college tuitions, and that trip with her parents down to Grand Cayman for their 60th wedding anniversary
Now it’s graduations and grandkids
What happened to Africa?
They still go shopping
Together, sometimes
He pays with their credit card, she pushes the cart
They had a comfortable life
May 25, 2012
May 25, 2012 at 1:04 AM UTC
it's past mid September,
the modest gradations
(and graduations)
of temp and the indirectness
of the ever shifting sun
are not lost on the
the skin of the locals,
nor even the
summer sojourner, who
recalls the past rainy June,
and the "who knew that
winter lasted so long"
on this peculiar planet island land
the calendar dictates
that the obligations of the
living are fully recommenced,
and the avoidance of realities,
cannot be excused, refused,
but they go ignored for just
one more day, and the ever
more spectacular pastel sunsets
tease, "see what you will be missing..."
the skeletons of beach fires
doused by silver beach sand,
are the last to say, we will still
be here, even though you've
hasten to where we have no
counterpart, and though we
will blend back to just being
sand and driftwood,
in time for what we the
inanimate,
loosely call next year,
but not remarked upon
any calendar in any ink
we can read...
forty years some tribe
tented in a desert, before
finding shelter,
we've counted 46, summers,
passed, neighbors, too, the
landscape dotted with newer
arrivals, and we just cluck, like
so many others, at the longing ferry line,
those who walk on the road's wrong side,
the one or two remaining tradespeople,
who still call our abode by our predecessors
last name, wondering when, if we will make
that grade
so much more to say,
what we've witnessed,
what has changed, what,
thank god, hasn't
but the city wants its fair share,
of us, and our taxes true, so come
upon just another last day, and look
back in the review mirror, remembering
the first last day of many years ago...
Sep 15, 2025
Sep 15, 2025 at 1:44 PM UTC
When I first learned how to read
When I got wounds and bruises
When other students bullied me
When my friends turned their backs on me
When I fell in love and got my first broken heart
My birthdays, recognitions, graduations, and family days
these are some of the times
When I needed a hug,
a pat in the back,
my Superman,
a Doctor,
A best friend
Someone to say "Congratulations! and i am proud of you."
Someone who is my father
But you were not even there.
It seems like you don't care.
Mar 20, 2015
Mar 20, 2015 at 8:21 AM UTC
When you die
People you will have never met
will give your family condolences
When you die
Spurned former lovers will
send delicate flowers
When you die
People will be summoned to
make you look beautiful
The way that you felt on nights
you enjoyed being yourself the most
When you die
Cautious children will cry
without ever learning
of your conflicting views on children
When you die
They might hang the church wall
with pictures of weddings
and graduations
When you die
You may not be alone
When you die
You might be the first and
the others will all follow
Having made no preparations of their own.
When you die
They might play your favorite song
or they might play a more "appropriate" song
as they lead you away
and some people will be scolding themselves
about forgetting where they parked
When you die
They may have forgotten that you didn't
believe in the afterlife
Quotations from Leviticus notwithstanding
When you die
You could be the the one who made
the most important impact on your daughter or son's life
You might have their life worth living
When you die
It may be to no applause
When you die
It may inspire your mother's gynecologist
to visit a church for the first time in almost half a decade
and feel genuine empathy for the rituals of human dignity
regardless of the tribe
When you die
none of your siblings may attend
the rain might pore on your last parade
and people might go home early
When you die
Everybody may just have a great time
heads beaming, shoulders high
When you die
It might be the longest day of Summer
with waterfights in the park near you were born.
When you die
You will have lived to see
all your ambitions come alive
Even if that penpusher "Reality"
explicitly states otherwise.
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
Sitting on a bus making a list
Of all the pretty words I know,
Highlights the hollow feeling
Like bells ringing without purpose
Ceremony for the sake of itself
Not like you
Not like funerals and graduations
Formality to induce respect,
Creating the environment for great emotion
The ability to change heartbeats
Bringing pride where there was
Unsteady satisfaction
The power of words together
Of language
You are my language
Not all that I speak or know
A culmination of my creativity
The end product of pretty vowels
Strung together to make
Abstract constructs
The idea that I can be somebody
Because someone has the faith that I can
You create the environment
For powerful emotion
For the torrent of pride and satisfaction
For the validation of my fears
For the seed of hope within my dreams
You are the comfort
When the day consists of
Dusk and dawn
Without the beauty of the sunrise
You are the reasoning
Behind jumping head first
Into waves of fire
Because you knew I could,
So I know I can
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 8:12 PM UTC
The clouds get darker every day
and the sun finds new ways to hide away.
God sends earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods,
fires that destroy everything that we love.
The embers burn brightly and we come together,
standing with hands linked. Our love is our shelter,
and I can only wonder if this is what He meant
to create disaster so that’d we repent.
We only heal when we’ve been broken.
We only cry when the wrong words are spoken,
but I think it’s beautiful that we’re learning to
cry like a waterfall at the happy things too.
Let the tears flow and the troubles fade
as we watch new beginnings come our way.
Weddings, birthdays, graduations, and more—
we cry, cry like babies, until we can’t anymore.
We read beautiful books, let the pages crinkle and fade.
We jump in the puddles and dance in the rain.
We make dandelion wishes and buttercup predictions.
We know our days are numbered and we are already missing
the days when we were younger
and the days that we were free,
when mistakes didn’t matter
and our world was drawn out with chalk on the street.
We knew we had it good, but it wasn’t until now
that I realized I didn’t need to be older to figure it all out.
You can only move forward, but you can always look back
at the colorful kites in the sky and the hot sand on the beach,
and be ready to take a little hand with you as you walk that path again
with the next generation that comes our way, ready to take it all in.
I’m only a quarter of the way through this life,
not even that, at seventeen,
and I’ve already got a good idea
of where we’re heading to.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 12:22 AM UTC
Began at dusk and led us here swiftly.
Along with the wind springtime
blew in new found forms of folly.
Invested in life vests to
rid the sleeves for my heart
To beat upon.
The moon show through
pale blue.
The air reeked of butterfly
winged exhaust pipes.
The ins and outs of
Seasonal rotation.
Life and death as one.
To illustrate landscape stretches
created from scraps of string.
Silence
Says a million different
Things.
Watching a multitude of human
beings from a distance.
I’m distant
from any sort of recognition.
What’s an honor when
the honor is expected
spread evenly among a crowd
of strangers expecting
Futures.
Silence
Says I’m as unique as
classes of identical robe wearing
shower goers;
As unique as uniforms.
Birds know no boundaries
when it comes to bravery
trying to communicate
something to me,
as part of me worries
for their safety.
Freedom is beyond me.
Intuitively,
Silence
Speaks with me.
She's telling me
silent was the bravery feathers
upon impacting the tires packed with pressure
ready to burst at the seems
silent was the bravery upon bursting at her seems
in the rear view mirror I see
wing feather constellations
painting a reality portrait for
me.
Silence
tells me selfishness
is the root of everything.
Silence
tells me mystery
is the beneath the X marks
of all the treasure maps I
painted repeatedly.
Silence
soothes
me.
May 23, 2012
May 23, 2012 at 10:47 PM UTC
Locked In
Closing my eyes, I drift away,
A memory of old, I hope to replay,
That special birthday, or event,
My mother’s cooking, a homely scent,
~~~
The trip to wales, our broken car,
Hysteria of life, the passing star,
Imagination, running free,
Brothers and Sisters, close as can be,
~~~
My first crush, and broken tears,
The dreams I have, roll back the years,
Christmas at home, a day in the park,
Long summer gone, a new life starts,
~~~
A walk down the aisle, my vow to keep,
A young child cries, her father weeps,
Home replaced home, our family grew,
One child family, soon became two,
~~~
Holidays abroad, children at school,
Bed before eight, that was the rule,
Two graduations, and career breaks,
Comforting daughters, boyfriend mistakes,
~~~
Tragedy returns, my eyes awoken,
Crying deep inside, no words spoken,
Family gather round, my body is dead,
The soul occupies, the thoughts in my head,
~~~
Holding my hand, hysterical tears,
Support switched off, as my time nears,
I close my eyes, feeling no pain,
Dreaming of when...
I will see them again.
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 4:44 PM UTC
i can watch the
clock on your
dashboard
turning
backwards
the hands going
the wrong direction
it's rare to find a
analogue timepiece
in a car nowadays
even rarer to find one
that goes in retrograde.
and all i can think
about is that i'm not
happy but i'm more
settled inside
isn't it sad
to be living only
in hopes of your
expiration date?
yes
yes it is.
i'm missing last winter
just a little
how safe it felt to be
your shotgun rider
with that perfect and slightly
annoying thirty minute mashup
fifteen minutes there
fifteen minutes back
anxious to leave
anxious to get home
to get into another van
one that wasn't stifled
i was your
shotgun rider
for monday afternoons
and drives to craft fairs
the ball and our own
educational funeral.
*(can we petition
to rename
graduations to
educational funerals?)*
i miss the old days
when mondays were happy
not anxious
or empty
thinking back on it
we spent too much time
in the back corner booth
of the doughnut shop chain
up on the east hill outside of town
and the coffee wasn't even good
i wish we had just gone to the
grocery store and
got some of that perfect
creamline milk you never shake.
i don't remember
the day i looked
on the label of the
jug and read the date
and it very clearly
was stamped with an
expiration of next
september
but when i tasted it
it had all gone sour
and i wondered how
painful it could be
to throw milk
out early
so i'm leaving it
in the fridge
until autumn
rolls around
just thinking
about how sad
it is to be living
with the hope of dying
but don't people do
the exact same thing?
Aug 18, 2016
Aug 18, 2016 at 9:40 PM UTC
The table waited
For the father and mother
For the merry children
For a splendid dinner
Beside the fire
Where memories flickered
Of roast turkey
And hot cocoa
And a puppy emerging
In a bright parcel
Of red and green
The festive colors
The walls remember
Candle lit evenings
Where stories were told
Under warm blankets
The children would snicker
And laugh in glee
And excitement
As the mother kissed them
And the father said good night
The porch reminiscing
Bright summer days
Where the family
Played joyous games
And sang with the guitar
The yard misses
Seeing the children
In clean uniform
Marching off to school
And coming home
With tired smiles
And the rusty old car
Creaks his hinges
As he weeps
Remembering the father
Who polished and cleaned
During dusty days
And the curtains were weary
For they wanted to move
To let sunlight in
To recapture moments
When the family
Would chase each other
Around the house
Playing hide and seek
Shrieking and exclaiming
In happy voices
The old tree so ancient
Bent over the house
Missing when the son
Would climb his branches
And when in night
He watches them in silence
Camping under his leaves
Huddling each other
In warm plump arms
And when the tree
Peeks in the window
He would see the daughters
Gladly dressing up
For birthday parties
And the doghouse
The wooden old doghouse
Falling apart
Looks at the past
At a little puppy
Licking at his bone
And then coming out
With dozens of other puppies
And the dusty floorboards
Weak and brittle
Will creak at night
Remembering footsteps
Entering and leaving
The grandiose proud door
With a bronze doorknob
And a chandelier would clink
When the wind passes
Filling the house
With flashbacks
Of a new baby
Of graduations
And weddings
And then of noise
Noises of fun
And laughter
And giggles
They cannot remember
The blind day
When everyone vanished
Not a letter of goodbye
Not a wave of the hand
No words no memories
Nothing
Sadness and peace once again
They all sighed
As the sun vanished
In the edge of the neighborhood
They all wept
For the old wood
In the middle of everyone
Waiting for the family
The sad dining table
In ashes and burnt chairs
The table waited
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 12:06 PM UTC
March 6th- we start talking
9th- we meet
Fast forward to the 17th and we are dating
I love yous every second
5 months later we're getting our own apartment and we've been talking about marriage for a while, at a year
Two years together now- I watch her tear up as she says her vows
The future holds a baby
A house
More children
Graduations
Anniversaries
Retirement vacations
Laughs, tears, screams in between and I know that
In the end I'll be able to rewind
A month
A year
A lifetime
And know that
Your hand was the one I held through it all
Your kiss on my lips every night
Your smile every morning
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 2:49 PM UTC
New Year's Eve
2 minutes to midnight
1 minute
30 seconds
20 seconds
10 seconds
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
It's a new year
But it's a scary year
Every year
It's just been back to the same thing
Back to school
Back to friends
Back to boring
This year,
everything is changing
Back to school
till May
April showers
Bring high school graduations
4th of July fireworks
Fade into freshman year
of college.
College
I've always dreamed of this
But it's so close
And I want a redo
Because it's been
almost a whole year
since you left
and I sit
and think of you
everyday
We were supposed to do this
together.
But you left.
-r.y.s
Jan 2, 2015
Jan 2, 2015 at 1:47 AM UTC
It is a beautiful day in my world.
The sun is shining, my skin is glowing,
Everything around me sings into my heart
In red, yellow and orange.
The world is playing me a beautiful song, in the perfect key,
And I wish I could save you.
I wish I could save you on days like today,
Days that are worth all the fight.
On days that chocolate tastes even sweeter than the day before,
And every hair on my head falls into place,
When I have all the answers to every question I ask myself,
And all of my thoughts find correlating words,
I wish I could save you.
There are days that make me so happy to be alive,
Days I know don’t come very often for you.
And on these days I pray for you.
I hope that one day the tiles in a new place won't make your skin crawl,
And I hope you’ll go to your grandchildren’s graduations without feeling unsafe.
Because no one can hurt you here, not with me around.
I spend these beautiful days hoping that you’ll make it to your next.
On my favourite, most rewarding days,
I spend the night wishing I could save you.
But it’s always the hard days that get me.
On days that make my stomach turn before I even leave my bed,
I think about what it’s like to feel this fear persistently.
When I wake up woozy with unease for no good reason,
And my body is too heavy, my heart is too weary to brave this world,
I think about how it must feel to always feel this way.
And I wish I could call you to tell you I’m too scared today,
Too scared to appreciate all that lead up to this.
But I live with innocence that you never had the privilege of having.
And I want to save you.
I want to absorb all of the things that you feel into my body and suffocate them with my love.
So I don’t, I don’t call you and I don’t tell you about the pain in my heart because yours is bigger,
So much bigger that it envelopes me,
Covers my mouth and pulls at the pit of my stomach.
On these days I wish I could save you out of my own selfishness.
Because I want to call you,
Want you to tell me I’m safe,
And no crying.
There are days when everything falls apart,
There have to be, or else how would I learn to put it back together?
You told me there are some things that can’t be fixed,
Like the traumatized mind.
Because you can’t fix your brain, only learn to live with a broken one.
I could listen to those words as many times as you repeat them to me,
And I know you will,
But I will always want to change them.
And I will always want to save you.
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM UTC
i didn't understand half
the words he said
and i don't understand half
the words you write
michael jackson
and waylon jennings
wrapped in a paper towel
"papa would be proud of you"
scratched in the back of
a children's book
it's the oddest thing
to no longer miss
someone who's been
gone so long
an odder thing to sit
in silence on your bed
with the fitted sheet all pulled
off the side next to the wall
feeling your best friend's
little sister's scratchy blue
nylon mattress rub
up against your sore feet
and open card
after card
after card
filled with glittering
words of praise and
monetary gifts
and then read about all
the things about you
that people think are
worthy of mentioning
and you start to
see a pattern
"thank you for serving"
"humor"
"creativity"
"imagination"
"let God lead you"
"keep rapping"
(thank you
and by the way
i don't rap only
occasionally slam)
it starts to feel like a
bulletpoint hallmark eulogy
like you've left your body
and are reading about someone else
reviewing all the better
more visible parts of yourself
the parts deemed loud
enough to be acknowledged.
and you start to see
what's lurking off
the edge of the card
and the words they didn't write
the places that you
went wrong
the question marks
behind their eyes
wondering why they
haven't seen you for two months
why your hair is a different color
why someone else is in your seat
and the semicolons in
your stomach
when you realize that
you've made a mistake
and even with all the hurts caused
you've still got a family out there.
i'll say this
when it comes to
graduations and funerals
you find out who your friends are
the people who matter
will show up in the end.
am i mislead in thinking
that sometimes people
don't say everything they
think or feel until it's too
late because it takes a
loss to make them realize?
Aug 17, 2016
Aug 17, 2016 at 7:36 PM UTC
he wore it
like stripes
and patches earned,
stitched to his chest
with needles through flesh;
...from amazing face at birth,
fresh, with cheeks to cash
and grow into
something valued like
commitment or blue chip stocks
something his children
could latch on to
that's my dad...
like medals and awards
and highlight pictures on the walls
of foyers
and family rooms
like gates to
the family's estate
swinging free of debt
for generations
next
and beyond...
something his children
would embrace
not erase
like foul stains
on childhood memories
in the making
like the illusion
of traditional ties
and vows
like graduations
and weddings
missed
and new births;
...to the lifeless face
of another casualty
of addiction;
cheeks pale like ashes,
cashing
only dust
~ P (Pablo)
(8/4/2013)
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 5:47 PM UTC
We sit across from one another, the table
a vast road block that my younger self is afraid to cross.
Tension is splayed out between us like an elephant in the room
and it pins itself down, heavy
on my chest.
I watch as a nother pill sends you sailing, you're worse off,
but I too am just as lost.
Just as you merely fall off your chair,
we all begin to plummet with you.
Take another, you'll fail to pay a bill,
just one more and you're on the kitchen floor.
You don't see me, but maybe you never had,
I've lost what you should be to us and
you're not the man I thought you could be.
I remember taking long rides,
trips to great beyonds,
heat exaggerated by tightly closed car windows
so bad we'd turn on the A/C.
We would go, the five of us, to play in the sun,
to enjoy the rain fall, to be young.
My youth ended at the hands of your stupid mistakes.
I remember being the one who didn't have to care,
just being cared for was enough.
I think back to the days where you were actually here
not just something I could watch from across a table
as I wonder when you'll begin supper or if you wonder.
I wonder if you remember how to walk in your state.
Mother is always worried now, as
gasoline stops running through the veins of this weak house.
There's another notice on the door
but only few things matter to you now.
I remember everything from these days so *god **** well*
and I hate myself for all of it. But,
I hate you more so.
I trusted you'd get better, I felt bad for you!
And I landed on my *** at the sweet age of 15.
The tension in our house, rose like an angry beast,
as two months past and you left bread on the table,
we still hadn't seen your face
you knew we didn't want you, I didn't know we didn't need you.
I was such a fool to have such stupid beliefs
I hated that you held nothing, walked away with nothing.
Now years roll past us,
changing seasons, graduations
my life has changed so greatly
I haven't needed you,
and I guess you didn't need any of us,
because there hasn't been a call or a visit,
not even a sign that you're still alive.
And I can't tell if it hurts anymore.
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 9:57 AM UTC
Flying kites in a spring breeze
Practicing until you can hit the ball with ease
Whole team shows up for an unscheduled practice
No memory will ever top this
Playing in the mud after a summers rain
Running from a bully that is so vain
Chasing after boys to give ‘em a kiss
No memory will ever top this
Graduations here and graduations gone
No one will remember our graduation song
But you know what I’ll miss?
A memory to top this
Dec 6, 2010
Dec 6, 2010 at 4:51 PM UTC