C S - Hello Poetry

C S Dec 2013

there will be no rain at my dance tonight

The man who was the first besides my father to kiss my forehead,
To tell me he loved me and sit beside me like he belonged there,
To break my heart in fragments with miserable finality-

Today, he became the boy who actively sought
To bring me to my knees, ribbing me just where he knew the raw scar to be-
One that he wrought and seemed so sickeningly proud of.

Today, he became the coward who picked a fight
With the hope I finally found in a new love.

Today, he became the selfish child
Who believed he had some kind of claim on me.

But oh, how wrong he is.
My heart was never really his.
Because I trusted it to the only man who is worthy of it,
my Father in the world I will call mine after this one.

I know that His plan included this pain.
I'm thankful that He was there to ease some of it,
Hold me as a writhed with it,
And help me to my feet when I won my battle with it.

The scar tissue from this boy's mistakes
Showed me the fierceness of my own two feet
And taught me that people change,
Just not the way you want them to.

So go ahead, boy.
Try to rain on my parade.
Talk down to me. Sneer at new love.
Tell him that no one could ever want me.

Because your words are just that.
Words. Words of a boy. Words of a coward.
But not words of the man I loved.
Not the weapons you think they are.

So you're going to walk away.
Because we're going to wave you goodbye for good,
And say God Bless.

So he's going to wonder why you ever let me go.
Because tonight I'm going to dance
With my bright soul and my own two incredible feet
Alongside a real man who wants to win my heart the right way-
By seeking it of my Father.

So I'm going to find happiness, love, and joy
Without you. I hope, with him.
But whoever it will be,
He will love me, and he will love God, and we will be right.

Because my dance has always been with Lord,
And know that He will let the right man cut in.
Now if you'll excuse me,
It's time for me to dance.

C S Dec 2013

Contentment

Contentment is for people who are satisfied to stop thinking.
To turn off all those parts of your head
That constantly generate questions
And continuously probe the accepted.
To hush the cells jumping up and down
To show you a new way to approach a topic,
Begging you to acknowledge the incredible plans
That could be birthed from the impossible way
You see the ordinary.
But I have an obligation to my mind.
Yes, sometimes it feels more like shackles than duty,
And yes, sometimes I want to abandon my notepad and paper
On the bedside table to have a "me day"-
Whatever that's supposed to mean -
Or halt the carousel of whirling thoughts for a nap,
But I can't.
I will always be curious, at my roots.
I grow from the dedication to my thoughts, upward.
A tree straining towards the light of innovation.
Why would I forsake the places my thoughts can take me,
Or the adventures my pen can take in translating them.
For the gifts this head gives me,
I must always be on call, on edge, on fire.
Contentment: unattainable.
Even if it weren't it would interfere with the very process
That would allow me to derive what meaning lies in contentment.
So that's my secret.
The Hulk was always angry, which is how he controlled and dominated.
I'm always searching, which is how I find and thrive.
I can't drown out my thoughts just to soak up the sun.
That's not contentment: that's complacency.
And complacency is not in my vocabulary.
How funny-
I am content with losing that one word
For the chance to be brilliant.

#curiosity #ambition #contentment #complacency #intellect #creativity

C S Dec 2013

It All Counts

If you counted up all the seconds we spent tweeting,
All the minutes we spent repeating,
All the hours we spent faking this thing-
"#YOLO", we call it.
If all 7 billion of us added up,
How many lives could we make
With the tick-tocks we spent talking about their brevity?
How many lives could we have saved, changed, re-arranged
With the attitude of using that one life to make a difference,
Instead of abusing the battle cry of a short life to do useless, irresponsible ****.
Calories, pranks, drugs, lust, rebellion.
Do you feel stupid for the things you bought with YOLO now?
'Cause you got it wrong.
Your life will flash before your eyes,
But will yours be worth watching?
It all counts.
But did you make it count?

#time #yolo #value #attitude #responsibility #counting

C S Dec 2013

Barbie Rules.

I see the soft, charming ringlets bounce up, down, and around
As my little cousin opens her gift.
I hear the tinkling sound of her excited voice,
but feel sick to my stomach when she tells Mommy and Daddy what it is.
She squeals "Barbie!"
And I want to scoop her up and run,
Far, far, away from the little plastic doll,
On, on, onward toward a safe view of beauty.

Her ignorance is bliss, but I know better,
And I pray with a heavy heart
For that beautiful, creative mind underneath the ringlets.
I desperately ask some higher power
How we can protect her from that little doll.
What were you thinking,
I want to yell at the grown ups.
Didn't you learn from us?

Don't you know that Barbie cut open our hearts and sewed in her plastic ideal
Before they had beaten long enough for us to walk?
That she shoved sharp words in our head
Before we could string together full sentences?
That we never stood a chance,
From the moment we tore open the shiny paper
Dotted with cartoon Christmas trees?
That the "must-have" gift for a little girl
Would enslave our bodies and minds to a "must-have" torture for the rest of our lives,
And teach our brothers and classmates to look for the woman
With not enough calories in her body to sustain a simple memory,
With not enough room in her waist to hold a kidney?

Maybe it's not all your fault, you grown-ups.
Maybe you've been chained to the unattainable images for so long
That you've forgotten the shackles were even there.
But does that not scare you?
Maybe you'll remember the strain
When you see a beautiful young woman's scars,
When you hear a breaking voice speak about her friend's final breaths
At her own fragile hands filled with little pills.

But most of all, I pray to God that you won't have to remember too late,
I hope you don't have to remember when you're chained to her hospital bed
Because the insufficiency you gifted her in a shiny plastic box
Started a cycle of sinister self-hate and destructive delusion
That she cannot outrun.
I won't let you forget, because you cannot remember that way.
I won't let you forget, because she can't end up that way, like we did.
You think you gave her a pretty little toy in a shiny little package.
Didn't you learn from us?
You gave her Pandora's box.

You look at me funny,
When I replace the impossibly-sized plastic "woman" in her hands
With a toddler-sized plastic piano.
You may not remember, but I always will,
And I will dedicate my life to making sure
These beautiful ringlets will never have to.

for Sophia

#beauty #protection #damage #image #barbie

C S Dec 2013

Headache

He told us the truth.
Writing isn't so hard, really.
You just sit with a pen and paper,
And bleed.
Maybe pounding my head
Isn't the right way to elicit bleeding.
But it did bring the kind of headache
That reminded me what I had to bleed for in the first place.
White House.
White papers.
Black suits.
Black president.
For change.
No better.
They pretend to have a headache, but their incompetence leaves us with headaches we're too young and shiny to deserve.
Aren't we?
Filled up
With life,
Potential, hope.
Why do we shoulder their burden?
The black suits in the white house made their own headache.
It doesn't matter to us.
Until it does.
Stimulus.
Filibuster.
Health-care.
Bail-out.
Drowned-out.
Shut-down.
Shout-down.
Bring-us-down.
We could be on our way to the top.
Mess-up.
Then complain about the headache it brings them.
What about us?
Because we're the ones affected.
Then is the worst part.
They do it frighteningly quick.
So easy, too.
Give-up ,
And leave for us to
Fix-up.
We have to shout.
Make you listen.
Stand-up.
One-two.
Thousands, millions.
Make them listen.
March-up.
Three-four.
Slogans, protests.
Make them change.
Head-up.
Five-Six.
Defeat, Regret.
See the impossibility.
Sit-down.
Seven-eight.
They won't listen.
**** the system.
**** the suits.
**** the house.
**** growing up.
Because you know,
Now we're grown.
So this is the headache
They talked about.
So this is why
We spill our blood.
Where's the cancel button?
How to delete?
It's a cycle,
Don't you see.
You can't wipe the memory.
Why we thought
We could ever get rid
Of the headache…
Beats me.

This is a spoken word poem I plan to perform sometime soon, so just putting the words on paper is like asking a tent to assemble itself by putting it on the ground, but better than nothing.

C S Dec 2013

Blindness

They tell us not to look into the light.
But these are the same people that tell us
Not to worry about politics just yet,
While they pile onto an unbearable debt
That we will have to shoulder when we grow.
They tell us not to be so loud,
While they have stopped making noise
About things that mattered long ago,
Leaving those who can’t speak for themselves
To suffer injustice in silence.
They tell us not to try and change everything,
While the traditions they uphold
Are helping our society crumble.
They tell us not to aim so high,
While they settle for what the world
Has told them they deserve,
Has told them is safe and normal.
So I have something to tell them.
Are they listening? Yes, there you all are.
I dare you to look into the light.
I tell you not to look away as I do everything you’ve told me not to.
If this is breaking the rules, then rules were meant to be broken,
And broken doesn’t mean what I thought it did.
I will look into the light.
I’m not turning a blind eye anymore.
I’m going to seek the light, the truth, the complicated in the world.
Looking into the brightness will not blind me,
But blindly following a lost generation of settling,
Of deafening mediocrity and suffocating quiet,
Of hiding your own brightness
Would do worse than blind me.
It would **** me.
Or worse-
make me just like you.

— The End —