"liting" poems
I wanna express my gratitude... to the few of you who didn't think I was too young or naieve to give advice. As a person with my analytical mindset, I love problem solving. I told my uncle that I have a weird affinity for broken women. I love people with stories to tell. Love the way legs can still stand despite the struggle. Love watching people break away from their own tragerdies. I love the thought you can dilute a great concentration of pain with just a little bit of kindness. Like liting candles in pitch black spaces, it only takes something small. My uncle says it's because people like me are wired to seek out things that need solutions. That's not to say they can't find their own solutions. I just like to see if I can play a part. So like tatoo artists on surgey wards. We sketch our art over people scars. Inject colour into their dark sides. Extend ourselves into their life lines.
We wanna fill what feels hollow.
Inscribe instrustions on how to smile and see if you'll follow.
And to anyone who thought what I said was good enough to act upon... thank you... and sorry.
Because hypocracy is a crime I practice all too often. Putting my own advice into application is extceedingly uncommon.
I would never take my own advice.
Because honesty with my loved ones would cause too much heart ache, I can not simply "just be open and real with her"
I cannot wear this skin with genuine pride because I would never "just be yourself man".
And despite the words falling falling out my mouth as we speak, why the **** would I understand "you are your own worst enemy. If you'd just believe in yourself you'd be surprised with what you can achieve".
To the many or the few who took my advice.
Who rolled the dice, who paid the price.
A penny for my thoughts and whether every thing changed or if all was for naught.
Maybe we just need to hear someone else say it. We so often are expected too try and stand tall in a world with ceilings that are too small. All some of us need, is to know that we're saying the right things.
So for everytime I was never told, I'm telling you. Let our voices be glitter and our ears be glue. Let people sparkle! Entice their shine so brlightly that they startle. Tell people all things you wanted to hear.
Jan 20, 2016
Jan 20, 2016 at 1:04 PM UTC
We stopped to eat at a McDonald’s after —
I’m sure the counter-girl could smell
the plastic-clean of stitches and nurses’ gloves
and medication hanging over him
while we ordered fries and burgers to fill
our guts before we made the long drive home.
And when we found a seat I thought that things
were fine. We sat there talking about the family,
until he spilled his drink and lost his ****
real bad this time, and he stood and said:
“I was alive when Carpenter’s was still
the biggest bus maker around — your grandpa
lived in Tunnelton and drove to work
across the cliff to crank them out. He smelled
like oil and the dusty river all the time,
and he used to never let your mother out
at night, because he thought that cougars
were thick around his farm. You bring her back
before the frogs are calling, he’d say, you bring her
back before the cats get at her face —
my daughter there’s worth more than your life —
she’s a queen and that’s a real queen’s face.”
He paused to **** a piece of ice and smiled,
and then he looked at all the busy people
bent up over their plastic dinner trays
looking at him, and he bit the ice and laughed.
“I never saw a cat like that. It was
the cliff that got her, and he should have watched
the river, driving by it all the time
the way he did to go and build those buses —
lots of things were rusting in the river,
and I guess the busses rusted, too. I didn’t see
a killer cat around the farm, but I saw
a thing or two that’s worse. I saw the light
they lit over her grave — you were too young
but you saw it, too: a propane thing we filled
together. You can’t buy one like that today —
today it’s all electric and plastic stakes,
and you never have to see the grave again
after you’ve planted one of those solar lights.
It stays for good. Those lamps outlast their names —
as long as the sun remembers to pay respects.
But I remember liting the little flame.
I remember how your grandpa’s face
lit up like a ghost’s, and I could see the scar
something large carved in his cheek one night
when he was hunting raccoons by the riverbank
out near the mouth of the Tunnel. It’s all
gone now — even the river’s lost the way
it used to smell like pines from on up north,
and only ghosts walk through the Tunnel — gone.
All of it. All gone. I guess he should have watched
the cliff, because it’s all gone now. All of it.
Even the buses rusted away, and there’s
no flame to mark the ghosts that’s left to stay —
all we’ve got are lights that last forever.”
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 9:10 AM UTC