This collection of poems is from a time when I was alone. Truly alone. A time of failure. And desperation. Disappointment and fatigue. I was too tired to fight anymore. Too hurt. Too lonely. Too busy trying to resuscitate that thirteen year old version of myself I’d lost years ago. Every poem is a chest compression. A breath blown into the lungs of a ghost. This is me, throwing a rope into the depths of depression, hoping to retrieve the me lost within it. I found him, beaten down, bruised, hanging by a thread. I found him in the desperation of darkness.
If you’re expecting an abstract collection of words. This isn’t the poetry for you. If you’re looking for short bursts of sentences, that pause, in places you, don’t understand. This isn’t the poetry for you. If you’re looking to analyze metaphors that may or may not have been intended when the author wrote them. This is not the poetry for you. If you’re looking for form and technical jargon and a hundred ways to say I love you. This is not the poetry for you.
This is raw, unfiltered, heartless yet heartfelt emotion with rhyme patterns within rhyme patterns that spill from the pen of a poet who dreamed of being so much more. This is hope in its most hopeless form. This is my soul exposed while holding a mirror to yours. This is everything I am. Everything I was. This is everything I hate about me. And everything I love. To be honest, this is failure, both mine and yours, at its truest and its harshest. This is what they didn’t want me to say because they didn’t want to hear it. This was written, in the desperation of darkness.
If you’re expecting an abstract collection of words. This isn’t the poetry for you. If you’re looking for short bursts of sentences, that pause, in places you, don’t understand. This isn’t the poetry for you. If you’re looking to analyze metaphors that may or may not have been intended when the author wrote them. This is not the poetry for you. If you’re looking for form and technical jargon and a hundred ways to say I love you. This is not the poetry for you.
This is raw, unfiltered, heartless yet heartfelt emotion with rhyme patterns within rhyme patterns that spill from the pen of a poet who dreamed of being so much more. This is hope in its most hopeless form. This is my soul exposed while holding a mirror to yours. This is everything I am. Everything I was. This is everything I hate about me. And everything I love. To be honest, this is failure, both mine and yours, at its truest and its harshest. This is what they didn’t want me to say because they didn’t want to hear it. This was written, in the desperation of darkness.
Unjustified Commitment
I walked away from the crowd
The comfort of their voices faded out
And the silence of night soon replaced their sound
Torn between two worlds
Wondering, why can’t I escape mine now
But I couldn’t
I was too deep
Knowing the streets would be the place I drowned
Pulled back by unfinished business
And the dreams that wouldn’t diminish
I worked too hard to relinquish
The crown of that stupid town that came within inches
Of claiming my life with little interest
It didn’t give a damn
And neither did the people within it
I stayed
Thinking I could win with all those demo tapes submitted
It was only a matter of time before someone listened
And took the chance on me that others didn’t
I walked away from a life that offered me something different
A life full of promises
Where every day wasn’t a rise and fall in the struggle of it all
Where happiness could have been consistent
Where I was respected simply for being me
And for the accomplishments I’d achieved
Thinking I should leave this instant
Leave the streets so malignant they took me to my limit
And threatened my very existence
Damn it, I changed everything I was and everything I loved
Just to make me more resilient
I was compelled to defeat what almost beat me
Revenge by success if I left just wouldn’t be sufficient
So I stayed
One foot in the grave
Unjustified commitment
In order to stay
I had to walk away
I think I knew when I did it
But my conscience just wouldn’t let me admit it
Two worlds held out their hands
Two worlds where I wasn’t once permitted
Worlds outsiders don’t get to visit
But would do anything to be in it
And in that minute
I chose
I returned to the world I’d known
Streetlights flickered
My fingers froze
Holding them out, reaching for those
Who held out their hands from their dorm room windows
Trying to pull me to safety before that window closed
Exposed to the elements in the cold
I strolled the ghetto roads alone on my long walk home
The window of opportunity shut
Their eyes welled up as they watched me go
That next semester, I didn’t enroll
They let me infiltrate their secret world
The elite, the athletes, the popular girls
They opened their doors and invited me in
You get one chance
One chance for that new life to begin
I knew because I’d been there before
And it felt like it again
Four years earlier when the streets opened their locks
And allowed entry to a lonely geek too broken to knock
The thugs, rappers and dealers undefeated in that warzone spot
Eternally competing for the throne on the block
They saved my life at a time no one cared
They let me into their world
When the elite, the athletes and popular girls didn’t want me in theirs
That night, I returned to the world that first accepted me in it
Secretly wishing I didn’t
Questioning this unjustified commitment
The comfort of their voices faded out
And the silence of night soon replaced their sound
Torn between two worlds
Wondering, why can’t I escape mine now
But I couldn’t
I was too deep
Knowing the streets would be the place I drowned
Pulled back by unfinished business
And the dreams that wouldn’t diminish
I worked too hard to relinquish
The crown of that stupid town that came within inches
Of claiming my life with little interest
It didn’t give a damn
And neither did the people within it
I stayed
Thinking I could win with all those demo tapes submitted
It was only a matter of time before someone listened
And took the chance on me that others didn’t
I walked away from a life that offered me something different
A life full of promises
Where every day wasn’t a rise and fall in the struggle of it all
Where happiness could have been consistent
Where I was respected simply for being me
And for the accomplishments I’d achieved
Thinking I should leave this instant
Leave the streets so malignant they took me to my limit
And threatened my very existence
Damn it, I changed everything I was and everything I loved
Just to make me more resilient
I was compelled to defeat what almost beat me
Revenge by success if I left just wouldn’t be sufficient
So I stayed
One foot in the grave
Unjustified commitment
In order to stay
I had to walk away
I think I knew when I did it
But my conscience just wouldn’t let me admit it
Two worlds held out their hands
Two worlds where I wasn’t once permitted
Worlds outsiders don’t get to visit
But would do anything to be in it
And in that minute
I chose
I returned to the world I’d known
Streetlights flickered
My fingers froze
Holding them out, reaching for those
Who held out their hands from their dorm room windows
Trying to pull me to safety before that window closed
Exposed to the elements in the cold
I strolled the ghetto roads alone on my long walk home
The window of opportunity shut
Their eyes welled up as they watched me go
That next semester, I didn’t enroll
They let me infiltrate their secret world
The elite, the athletes, the popular girls
They opened their doors and invited me in
You get one chance
One chance for that new life to begin
I knew because I’d been there before
And it felt like it again
Four years earlier when the streets opened their locks
And allowed entry to a lonely geek too broken to knock
The thugs, rappers and dealers undefeated in that warzone spot
Eternally competing for the throne on the block
They saved my life at a time no one cared
They let me into their world
When the elite, the athletes and popular girls didn’t want me in theirs
That night, I returned to the world that first accepted me in it
Secretly wishing I didn’t
Questioning this unjustified commitment