Tag: identity

Lighthouse

I cannot see it in a byline
Nor do I think I ever shall
It is not a name for elegies
You won’t see it on a wall
No, I won’t hear it spoken
In reverence or respect
It is, after all, only me
And who am I but a speck
In a sea of brilliance and trouble?
If ever I shine bright enough
To be seen from years away
It will not be as star-stuff
No, I will be a lighthouse
And if anybody says my name
It will be in tandem with
Somebody saying: “look out for those rocks!”

What’s Free

There’s so much of artistry
Where can there be a place for me?
With bitterness I lace my words
To quell the death I’ve chosen
As if it puts me with the birds
To lace my quill with poison
But I know myself afraid of heights
And that we create our greatest plights
Yet I don’t know what to do
When everything that I could be
Always seems to look like you
And I have no clue what would look like me
So instead I merely take what’s free
And try to turn it into artistry.

The Carver

A carver took his thoughts
And all of his experiences
And laid them carefully on his table
He picked one, one he liked,
And he began to go to work
Chip, chip, chip
He took away the excess
Shaping it into what it was meant to be
Letting his thoughts
And all of his experiences
Guide the movement of his hands
When it was finished, he looked it over,
The finest work he’d ever done
It came out in two pieces
In his heart belonged the one
The other moved at his demand
And he knew they were his only masterpieces
The dagger in his heart
The other in his hand.

Unshapable

You think I’ll live and die alone
But I already have
You think I’ll never reach the world again
That doesn’t sound so bad

You think I’m capable of more
I think you’re more than wrong
Every test that’s come my way
Has disappointedly gone

You think to get me into shape
With a stencil and a knife
Well I truly am sorry, dear
But this is my life.

Policy of Truth

Am I supposed to tell you what I’m thinking
When what I’m thinking is a sin?
Am I supposed to be so very honest
When everything is caving in?
I have seen the price of honesty,
And no commandment not to lie;
Perhaps what I’m supposed to do
Is leave the truth of me to die.

***

It should be noted that I am one who has, on occasion, blurted things out without properly weighing them first; and not as a result of any pressure, or what people told me I was “supposed” to do, but because I personally feel it is right to be truthful. It’s just not always smart.

Optimism

Did it come to me in ember dreams
Or by the winds that swept worries
Out to shores of distant isles
To linger long and turn to smiles

Or did it come, at last, by sea
And by ship bring me memory
Of someone that I once had been
And that I so long to be again

However it thus came my way
I hope it might be here to stay
For if it can bear my company
What can I bear, but anything?

Binary

I’m flying at half-mast
Just a symbol of the past
A thing better deleted
And you’d better do it fast
Because we can’t get caught on reasons
It all comes down to someone’s treasons
And if every win is someone else defeated
Then the world is just zeroes and ones
When no one wants to be a number
And we all just want to be a winner
But nowadays everyone is seated
Eyes getting ever dimmer
Straining to see a different road
Trying to write a different code
In the same language that we treated
As an overbearing load
When what we don’t really want to carry
And what we really want to bury
Is that all we are, we created
We wrote ourselves in binary

Gardens

There is madness in my mind
Growing rampant on the vine
It’s a weed, not very kind
But I’m growing it as mine

My sister grows the roses
The daisies are my mother’s
My brother just bulldozes
Plots of land for others

But I am growing madness
And I water it with strife
I feed it with my poison
Because it’s all I can give life