December 8, 2008

  • We all wanted that high school sweetheart
    We wanted to be young in the 50s with meatloaves and sock hops
    And lawns, lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable was kissing them

    We wanted to be thirteen and alive and meet a girl that was thirteen and alive
    And walk with her past the grandstands, to sit and hold hands, to sit and kiss, to sit and sit,
    Like it was something you would miss, but that - never was

    We once went to bed like between the bed sheets was a valley with dinosaurs still breathing
    And how we capture these triceratops?
    And brontosauruses?
    But even they were opened up with the smoke that rose out of the homes and the corners that we once climbed through,
    The streets and the footballs which we once threw,
    The school desks upon which we once drew,
    The windows that sat open through we once flew,
    Before the outside world of parking spaces and dead friends came flooding on in
    And we forgot what we wanted
    And we became what we become:
    Waitresses and bartenders, city employees and temp positions,
    We are junkies and one kiss poems and we cry the stars
    As we write our scars onto dumpsters and electric boxes
    Because the only thing that we can hear is our hearts
    And the only ones listening are the streets

    That the blood that breaths through the letters we leave
    And we dream to rise ourselves up out of these burning buildings
    But instead we get buried somewhere beneath

    Because I know my life is like some high school kids notebook
    A high school kid that shuffles back and forth between school and home
    Stacking the letters and the pictures too close for anyone outside of his own imagination to read
    Because it's through the ink that his heart beats,
    That his heart breaths
    And we all just wanted to write these notes

    Check if you like me:
    Check if you don’t:
    Check if you'll date me:
    Check if you won't

    Because we all wanted the love songs to be true
    And we did love dinosaurs once
    And we wanted the stars to hold our hands,
    To lick the teeth to fuck us,
    but they ended up fucking us...up
    Let your smile twist
    Like my heart dancing precariously on the edge of my fingertips,
    Staining them like that same high school kid licking his thoughts,
    Using his sharpie tip writing:

    "I was here/I was here, mothafucka/And ain't none of y'all can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in/I’m here, mothafucka, and we all here, mothafucka, and we all mothafuckas, mothafucka"

    Because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die
    Because every breath I take takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father's eye
    Because every word I carry is another stone to put into place in the foundation that I'm building
    Because the days can erase something that I never saw
    What all of us wanted and what none of us got
    What we all had and have and what we all forgot
    That we all wanted to be something
    That we all became something
    And it might not be the shit we once though we'd be when we were kids but something is still something
    And like some cats say, something is better than nothing

    Feet are smarter than an engine
    And dreams are stronger than thighs
    And questions are the only answers we need to know that we are alive as I am when I have the mind of a child
    Asking why is 2+3 always equal to 5?
    Where do people go to when they die?
    What made the beauty of the moon?
    And the beauty of the sea?
    Did that beauty make you?
    Did that beauty make me?
    Will that make me something?
    Will I be something?
    Am I something?

    And the answer comes: already am, always was, and I still have time to be
    -Anis Mojgani

    I think what we want is a confirmation of those dreams we have. We have these visions - let's face it, we were brought up being told anything was possible so long as we fight for it. So we fight 'til our knuckles are bloody, trying to confirm what our broken hands are trying to tell us cannot exist. So we just get to the point that we ask that we're shown just one thing - confirm that it isn't impossible. I can simply breathe knowing that these ideas and hopes and dreams are possible.

    Someone confirm it for me - show me one person that does what I believe is possible for us to do and confirms my thoughts of this better world.

    Of course, who's to say until we witness it.

    Whenever I see a blog or any writing where the individual identifies themself as being in high school (or so), I immediately expect to find, in some fashion, complaints of how things are and how they ought to be. Maybe that's just what I had been used to. I'm more likely to think that's what I had come to expect because I hated the notion that just because I was younger I was incapable of constructing ideas with validity. Of course, there are many things I've done in the past which I now disagree with. We grow with time. But does that mean that I didn't retain (in the exact way the ideas were concieved, surprisingly) some ideas which had been crafted way back in my childhood? Of course not. Think big, plan, stick by your ideas, and craft your own. Don't bother to take what is as the end-all or what you're stuck with.

    Which is, I suppose, why it makes me marvel when I don't see an ounce of trying in those written words. They just are. They're arrogent, they complain, they're disgustingly selfish, and they're content with this.

    Everything starts with you.

    Well, it ain't no secret
    I've been around a time, or two
    Well, I don't know, baby
    Maybe you've been around too
    So, there's another dance
    All you gotta do is say yes
    -Bruce Springsteen

    Remember the day that shall forever remain in infamy.