The following is a spoken word poem that alludes to the rippling framework in which death and indifference function. In place of a final suicide note, this piece is an ode to a childhood full of neglect. It speaks for a young man who never had a voice of his own.
The message that I was trying to get across, through this poem, was that memories never die. Beyond the grave, they echo, haunt, and sing to the living. They sing of a life, of tribulations, of sorrow, and of happiness. Unlike people, memories are impartial, transferable like ink to paper–eternal. However, much like people, they are also easily soiled by the passage of time. The scars they inflict, all the same, are unforgettable. Therefore, this piece is about the burden and destructive nature of such history and what it can amount to.
The child sat there staring
Up into the air
Dwelling in deep sadness, thinking
“no one ever cared”
He tightened up the rope
Somber as he sang
Then took one last step forward
And there his legs did hang.
Over and over and over again
It bellowed across the hall
Neither demanding reprisal nor vowing revenge,
He spoke from beyond the grave with no ill intent.
The notes he sang drifted
Among scattered leaves of youth
Fanning flames into infernos
Of a time of simpler truths.
He spoke of forgotten elementary school sandwiches
Fermented in locker of neglect
Of a mother who ground him to dust so fine,
Every inch he grew served only as indicator
In her hourglass of time.
His entire life echoes
A frequency only you can hear
Suffocating as you catch it multiply,
A nervous ringing in your ears.
A mobilizing army,
The threat of being swallowed drawing near
As he speaks of equation of x’s and o’s
On palms of boyhood speared.
The chain that snapped, the swing that fell
He tells you how it hurts
It makes you want to comfort him,
In ways his mother never could.
But time does not go backwards
Like the senile and the brave
Nor does it ever lapse, rest
Freeze in place.
And as the echoes grow ever softer
And a smile is heard just out of reach
As you strain your ears harder
Missing it again by but a beat
The last remaining note of his discord
Goes unheard by history.