Monday, April 26, 2010

It's best to compose a poem...

Hello my lemons,

I'm writing poetry again. But the new stuff is too raw still so I shall post something I wrote for the seniors last year which seems perfect for the semester's wind down:

For the Seniors

If I hung you on the wall like a mirror,
I wonder if you'd talk like me, act like me.
Could I dress you up and keep you here with me?
Sing you stories and show you songs about me?
Could I hug you in the quiet crazy of my sleep
When houses I no longer live in call me home
And running never gets me where I'm going.
But they are pretty, all the same, these dream sleep dreams.
They tap at our unspoken and the too much spoken
And yet demand no specific answer for their questions.

Find me in the midst of these and sing,
Tell me how you are like my skin, my story,
But how you dream instead of ponds and rivers
Sometimes frozen but rarely walkable or warm.
How you hang art on the wall instead of mirrors
And find yourself staring at the thick paint,
Wondering why the artist painted blue
When you had always considered grass green.
Which then makes you think of open plains and fields
And following your footsteps to some new house
Some home where mirrors and art are hung side by side
But maybe you don't recognize your skin or the color of paint
When it sketches itself in unrecognizable colors and hues
On walls that look nothing like the home in your head.

Find yourself there where the rivers freeze overnight
And the sick do not always remember your name.
Find there the sad cry of tired voices
And their need for a dream like yours.
Not for mirrors or symbolic art on church walls
But for passion and a willingness to hold the pain.
For recognizing that grass is not always green
And that sometimes the strangest dreams let you run the farthest.
Hold them there and let me be here in my wandering,
Also finding the places that somehow feel like home.

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