Resentment
Don't forgive me when I'm gone
Keep your grudges as gold
Though eventually life will move on,
do unto my memory hold.
As much as I wish I could stay
It's not a realistic request
For life's debt is more than I can pay
And my bones ache for rest.
My eyes to become the flowers
My feet to become the thorns
My hands to still by the hour's
Rush to become the morn.
Do not weep for me instead
Stand at my grave with spite
Hate me for the life I had led
For I won't meet you in dawns light.
-Poem I heard in a dream
“Obtuse Degrees” Freeverse
I don’t want to see Me
In Gen Z
What I mean
Is being labeled:
Weak-willed;
Snowflake;
Entitled;
Nervous Nelly;
Etcetera.
What I mean
Is being told
Not to worry
When all of life
Is still to come
As if
My kid-worries were Sin
For considering what
Adults were doing.
Before the New Era
Code Reds were in-theory
Not Inevitable.
Young’ins must know
Ways and means
A to Z
So they said
But Millennials
Know better.
No One Left Behind
Left a lot of us out.
Standardization
Wrecks
Where are the checks
And balances
On standardized extremes?
We remember the Turn.
We were mandated to learn.
Why must they, too?
There’s sh*t Z needs to grow
And we know lots of it -
So why aren’t there Lots
Of options by now?
Incrementalism agrees
With Democracy!
So free -
Pick A or B!
There is time
For X, Y, and Z.
Where are the leaders
Where are the systems
Willing to work
Willing to listen?
It’s dismissive.
If Plan Z is on Me
I promise to try
To hear
To change
To rearrange
In order
To thrive.
You know -
Lots of alphabets
Have more than twenty-six
Letters
It festers
The Not-enoughness
Of Everything.
Dreaming isn’t about Achieving.
It’s about Conceiving
What’s Best For Me?
I’m prob’ly not alone
In thinking
We need more
Help.
Kids know the most
About how things Are.
We should see
Past the expressions
To discover what they mean,
What we need.
* * * * *
@DANdeLION_Page \ @bykaileyann
#prose #poetry #freeverse
Stuck
He collects stamps because that’s the closest he’ll ever get to traveling the world, these little pieces of paper that have crossed oceans and traversed mountains while he’s stuck walking along the same cracked streets, sun to moon. His mother once crossed an ocean to get here, from a place he’ll never see, home to cousins he’ll never meet. Thailand exists only as an idea, a space in his mind where everything tastes of sweet rambutan instead of the salt of his sweat. He was warned, though – they call it the American dream, and everyone knows dreams aren’t real.
