Bye-Bye Button

Hope you like it! Please let me know what you think, I always appreciate it! Thanks!! :-)

Bye-Bye Button

I used to have a red button

pinned to my purse proclaiming,

Don’t Be Afraid of Dying

Be Afraid of Not Living

I bought it while playing around in Boston

and promptly lost it

on my flight back to Michigan.

To be found a few minutes later

stuck between the airline seats.

Damned thing had a habit

of unlatching itself from me,

and trying to go on its own adventures,

only to usually end up on the floor of my car.

Then one day

when I was out hiking on my own

in the forests of northern Michigan

I sat to take a rest,

put my bag on a stump

and saw that my button was missing.

I continued my hike

and on the way back kept glancing to the ground

in hopes of spotting my wayward pin.

Back at my car I searched

around, under, and in,

never finding my little escape artist.

Driving back to my home base that evening,

I couldn’t help smiling to myself.

My little companion went out

following its own advice.

I hope some kid,

who was maybe dragged out to the trails

finds it and takes its words to heart

and vows to keep exploring, learning, and playing

until their last days.

That’s what I’ll be doing.

-----

A Punk Rock Sense of Honesty

So, I've been listening to a lot of Frank Turner lately (a folk-punk rocker) who is an amazing songwriter! The title is taken from part of a line in his song "Nashville, TN" the entire line is "A simple scale on an old guitar, and a punk rock sense of honesty." I was driving around today and the last part of the line just stuck with me, so of course, I decided to write about it. This is pretty much a stream-of-conscious piece, so the formatting is very intentional in this one. Hope you like it! Let me know! Thanks!!

I absolutely Love this photo of Frank! From Google Image

 A Punk Rock Sense of Honesty

Passion.

Passion of friends, family, causes, life!

I wear my heart on my sleeve.

I rage quietly

                        and loudly

when things go bad

or in celebration

                               when life is kicking ass.

You piss me off and I

will scream at you face-to-face,

in your face,

me more than likely on my tiptoes.

You make me cry

and I will hug you

fiercely

and try to never let go

until my arms tire and I need my space.

I will scream, rage, and cry

about injustices faced by you, me, and the world.

For the early needless death of the ones who’ve lit

fires in our souls,

for the loss of our carefree lives

and the depletion of our sense of calm.

I sit outside a coffeehouse

calm, writing, quietly

while my head buzzes with an ever continuous monologue

of life, and with tunes running through my brain.

I realize that I’ve gotten off the topic

of punk rock honesty,

yet we never really quite left it after all.

Punk has always equaled passion

for life and everything it compromises,

and honesty is excepting life.

and honesty is trying to change

the needless bullshit and injustices thrown into our world,

it’s not staying silent.

We write songs, poems, prose

about ourselves, our hearts, our worlds, our friends

as honestly as we can, no matter what.

We laugh together

We cry together

We party together

We fight together

We live together

We dream together

We look at the world

and tell it that we

Will Not Be Ignored.

We’ve lived,

and our stories will be told.

and That is punk rock honesty.

-----

For Us All

Sorry if this gets kinda preachy at the end, but this is what's been on my mind for a while now. Kinda got coughed up onto the page this afternoon. And yes, I damn well should take my own advice at times.

For Us All

The other day I was exploring

a semi-upscale shopping center dressed

in an old college hoodie, oversized shorts and faded bandana

when in walks a woman dressed

to the nines in her bridal gown.

I smiled to myself, straightened my posture,

and continued browsing.

Now I’m having brunch outside a hipster establishment

eating, sipping coffee, and writing

and all the hoity-toity tourists walking by

keep giving me bad looks.

I’m sure I look like just some young punk,

clad in a black band shirt, beat up black hoodie with a white bandana.

I give them each a hard stare

(to add to my persona)

while smiling to myself.

I know who I am, and lately

I’ve taken a better liking to her:

the girl with a kind word for others,

yet a strong backbone for herself.

Sure, a little rough around the edges still,

but she assures me she is working on that.

So often lately I’ve seen strong-willed people complain

about situations are out of their control or

forgetting about all the good in their universes.

I want to take them

and shake them,

tell them to take charge of their lives and create their own happiness.

Dance alone in the city streets at midnight

to the soundtrack running through your head.

Write down each and every thing,

tiny or huge,

that has ever made you smile.

The truth is:

we make and we break ourselves.

Be kind when you can,

stand up for yourself and your beliefs.

and make sure to show the world your strengths.

-----

Age of Innocence

Age of Innocence

Him: I hate all these kids

nowadays, crying over Justine Bieber!

Don’t they know that there are actual issues

to be concerned with?

Me: Calm down, they’re young,

the terrors of the world will hit them

soon enough.

The next day we all watched

in horror as a madman

gunned down 5-year-olds

and stole the sweet butterfly chasing

innocence of an entire community of children.

We know violence, brass knuckles, blood, death

as adults watching others

too often with weary eyes

waiting for them to strike.

Yet we try to shield children

from the news of planes flying into towers.

We are left to to figure out how to explain

cops, vigilantes, and madmen

killing unarmed citizens

and stealing loved ones from their families.

I miss not having to worry

about the world

destroying our innocence.

-----

Alone

Happened to see dVerse poets pop up today, so I looked to see what they were up too. It was a prompt for a poem, 2am. That's it, write a poem that contains "2am" somewhere in it. I thought it was fun, and wrote some in my head while driving home this afternoon. When I actually sat down to write, I came up with 2 poems! This is the one that I like the best, maybe I'll post the other one tomorrow or something. Hope ya like it, tell me what you think! And check out dVerse over at http://dversepoets.com/! Fun group, haven't wrote with them in a while. Oh life, you move so fast sometimes!

Alone

I like the middle of the night,

it’s the time when I get to be truly alone

with my thoughts, my actions, myself.

Yes, sometimes my mind clicks on ‘him’

and I’m left sobbing for hours

curled up on the hardwood

unable to release myself from the hell-scape in my brain.

But there are also nights

just past 2am, when the neighborhood is silet

and I dance in the kitchen

while baking brownies

knowing that I won’t be interrupted by life.

Some nights I’ll crack a beer,

later than I know I should,

drinking until my head gets hazy

and I remember every damn little thing

that is wrong with myself,

and I question if I can truly get through another night.

And I just want to reach out

to someone who cares,

but it’s too late

to disturb anyone.

I like the nights

when I’m trapped in a book

and I don’t even notice

that the sun set hours ago

or the change from night to morning

until I happen to glance at the clock

that reads 3:30am.

But it doesn’t deter me

as I think Okay, just one more chapter

and shift to my other hip

enjoying my freedom.

-----

My Music Scene

My Music Scene

In my car,

windows rolled up tight,

I can feel the chords

of my favorite guitarist

reverberate in my chest.

My head is tossing around

to the melody

as my hands beat out

the rhythm of the drums

on my gray steering wheel.

Sun glasses on, hairy messy,

my yellow guitar pick held

firmly in my jaw.

I am happy, I am free,

I am myself.

-----

What I'll Miss - A Reposting

What I’ll Miss

Random thoughts you voiced to me

still remain in my Poetry Prompts list

on my phone. They still make me smile

and remember the good in our friendship.

This past November you read every single poem

that I wrote each day of the month,

sometimes checking in at 2:30AM
right before going to bed

so you wouldn’t miss the day’s piece.

You told me what you thought

from a simple I liked it

to a deeper I really connected with that one
to that's what I expected tonight,
a thoughtful one.

One night drunkenly telling me that

I love your writing and your poetry

so I wouldn’t feel bad that you

didn’t have time to read one right away.

The encouragement to use your ideas

to help propel my own words.

And the motivation to turn a poem into a song,

even though it Doesn’t matter if it ever

sees the light of day, writing and playing

is the important part.

I got worried that we talked

too much about me and my life

so I asked you about your days

playing music, hanging with family, and working.

I got to know you

through your stories, music, and jokes.

The times I’ll miss the most

are the ones in which we connected,

even though we were physically so far apart,

but that didn’t seem to affect our friendship.

I already miss sharing my poetry

with you and knowing

that at least one person will read,

understand, and appreciate my words.

I already miss your humor, stories, encouragement

and kind words that kept me going

when I was being too hard on myself.

This is why I cry,

because you were special,

and I already miss you.

----
The person that this is about was really the first person to make me feel confident as a writer, that someone could actual relate to, and that someone really enjoyed, my poetry. And for someone like me, that meant the world, and gave me so much confidence in my work and in myself. And even though it still hurts over a year later, I will always be grateful for the good things he gave me.

So I wrote this poem a while back and posted it here. I took it down after awhile. The subject and I went through a really horrible falling out, and it hurt to look at it, even though it's about the good. And I guess that's why I put it back up, to remember the good. Everything in it is true (and he knows this too); and no, not all the good is in here.