To This Day

(I do not own this it belongs to Shane Koyczan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
Were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
And because my grandmother thought it was cute
And because they were my favourite
She let me keep doing it

Not really a big deal

One day
Before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
And bruised the right side of my body

I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
Because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
For playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been

A few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
And I got sent to the principal’s office
From there I was sent to another small room
With a really nice lady
Who asked me all kinds of questions
About my life at home

I saw no reason to lie
As far as I was concerned
Life was pretty good
I told her, “Whenever I’m sad
My grandmother gives me karate chops”

This led to a full scale investigation
And I was removed from the house for three days
Until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises

News of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
And I earned my first nickname

Pork Chop

To this day
I hate pork chops

I’m not the only kid
Who grew up this way
Surrounded by people who used to say
That rhyme about sticks and stones
As if broken bones
Hurt more than the names we got called
And we got called them all
So we grew up believing no one
Would ever fall in love with us
That we’d be lonely forever
That we’d never meet someone
To make us feel like the sun
Was something they built for us
In their tool shed
So broken heart strings bled the blues
As we tried to empty ourselves
So we would feel nothing
Don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
That an ingrown life
Is something surgeons can cut away
That there’s no way for it to metastasize

It does

She was eight years old
Our first day of grade three
When she got called ugly
We both got moved to the back of the class
So we would stop get bombarded by spit balls
But the school halls were a battleground
Where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
We used to stay inside for recess
Because outside was worse
Outside we’d have to rehearse running away
Or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
In grade five they taped a sign to her desk
That read beware of dog

To this day
Despite a loving husband
She doesn’t think she’s beautiful
Because of a birthmark
That takes up a little less than half of her face
Kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
That someone tried to erase
But couldn’t quite get the job done
And they’ll never understand
That she’s raising two kids
Whose definition of beauty
Begins with the word mom
Because they see her heart
Before they see her skin
Because she’s only ever always been amazing

He
Was a broken branch
Grafted onto a different family tree
Adopted
Not because his parents opted for a different destiny
He was three when he became a mixed drink
Of one part left alone
And two parts tragedy
Started therapy in 8th grade
Had a personality made up of tests and pills
Lived like the uphills were mountains
And the downhills were cliffs
Four fifths suicidal
A tidal wave of anti depressants
And an adolescence of being called popper
One part because of the pills
Ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
He tried to kill himself in grade ten
When a kid who could still go home to mom and dad
Had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
Is something that can be remedied
By any of the contents found in a first aid kit

To this day
He is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
Could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
In the moments before it’s about to fall
And despite an army of friends
Who all call him an inspiration
He remains a conversation piece between people
Who can’t understand
Sometimes becoming drug free
Has less to do with addiction
And more to do with sanity

We weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
To this day
Kids are still being called names
The classics were
Hey stupid
Hey spaz
Seems like each school has an arsenal of names
Getting updated every year
And if a kid breaks in a school
And no one around chooses to hear
Do they make a sound?
Are they just the background noise
Of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
When people say things like
Kids can be cruel?
Every school was a big top circus tent
And the pecking order went
From acrobats to lion tamers
From clowns to carnies
All of these were miles ahead of who we were
We were freaks
Lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
Oddities
Juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
Trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
But at night
While the others slept
We kept walking the tightrope
It was practice
And yes
Some of us fell

But I want to tell them
That all of this shit
Is just debris
Leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
We used to be
And if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
Get a better mirror
Look a little closer
Stare a little longer
Because there’s something inside you
That made you keep trying
Despite everyone who told you to quit
You built a cast around your broken heart
And signed it yourself
You signed it
“They were wrong”
Because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a clique
Maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
Maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
To show and tell but never told
Because how can you hold your ground
If everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
You have to believe that they were wrong

They have to be wrong

Why else would we still be here?
We grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
Because we see ourselves in them
We stem from a root planted in the belief
That we are not what we were called
We are not abandoned cars stalled out and
Sitting empty on a highway
And if in some way we are
Don’t worry
We only got out to walk and get gas
We are graduating members from the class of Fuck Off We Made It
Not the faded echoes of voices crying out
Names will never hurt me

Of course
They did

But our lives will only ever always
Continue to be
A balancing act
That has less to do with pain
And more to do with beauty.

My Darling Sara


(I do not own this it belongs to Shane Koyczan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)


“The failing use of my right hand

isn’t actually the failing use of my right hand

it’s just another way to tell the time

and I’m ticking

so I’ve been picking myself up at bars

with a bottle in each hand

but I never give myself any play

I only make plans with myself for the day after next

but by the time the sun swings back around into position

I forget the context of why I asked myself out

in the first place

did I think I was going to score?

I let a stranger pour me one more

she says

my name is Sara

doesn’t take much more than that

to start a relationship

My darling, Sara

cleans rooms for a living

giving her youth and beauty

to dirt and dust

understands more than most

that family must be the foot you put forward first

you must weather the worst together

but having never met her family

she places love above all else

then protests that I use the word love

too freely in poems

and I should really just say what I mean

and I suppose what I mean most is that

I’m trying

she’s been buying me time

on a maxed out credit card

arms scarred from selling her own blood

to pay down the debt

tells me she doesn’t mind going broke

just so long as I can give her a little sweat

she says

try

so I do my best impression

of a pen

and when every problem looks like a page

I commit ink to paper

the worth of the words that come out

determines my wage

I’ve been making enough

to pay her the compliment

of not quitting..

of not sitting

when standing is required

she only asks that I put the effort in

and in return she’s willing

to pin a paper heart to her chest

then do her best impression

of a target

She tells me that effort

is the siamese twin of success

so when everyone else looks like a wrong answer

she says she’ll settle for being my best guess

so we lie in bed like a mess

that someone’s been meaning to clean

for the large part

of a long while

we lie there like a pile of dirty laundry

and how we’ll ever come clean

is beyond me

so we don’t

she says

it’s supposed to be dirty

and if by the end you haven’t hurt me

then you didn’t try

so I do my best impression

of a surgeon

cutting purple hearts out of my own

use my veins like thread

then have hurt sewn to our skin like medals

because when the bleeding stops

and that dust settles

all we have are our wounds

to wear like decorations

upon our chest

Sara does her best impression of a war

tells me not to count my pride among casualties

because maybe faith means never keeping score

she says there’s more to effort than just switching gears

and in terms of what one should give in life

sweat holds more value than tears

you have to try

and even though

the failing use of my right hand

means I’ll never land a knockout punch

in the first round

life is composed of sound and fury

whatever noise is left in me

will be twice as loud when I try

so I plug myself into the idea of going the distance

and I amplify

My darling, Sara

has a throat like a vase

she sings her words into bloom

has voice like perfume

it’s been sticking to my clothes

so everyone knows where I’ve been sleeping

she’s been keeping me so close

you could use my body for evidence

pull her fingerprints as proof

that she’s been on top so often

she’s starting to look like my roof

but a real sexy roof

and she doesn’t leak

unless you count the crying

she does that sometimes

worries that she’s just a back up plan

My darling, Sara.

I’ve lived long enough to learn

too many choices can destroy a man

I will make no exodus

I’ll be around long enough

to watch uncertainty bid us farewell

the echo our names into the crater

caused by the impact

of when our lack of conviction fell

you’ve never had to sell me on the idea

of absolute certainty in the trustworthiness of another

the first and only time you met my mother

mom said

“I like the way she looks at you”

and I echoed back to her

that I liked it too.

eyes like recycle bin blue

Sara looks at broken things

as if she can make them new

more than a few times I’ve caught her staring

caught her wearing

a smile reserved for those busy making plans.

Sara believes that distance is a fundamental

that can be side-stepped by a piece of string

and two tin cans

and I remember when my tin can rang.

they said

there’s no family to speak of

so love is next in line

and there’s not a lot of time but

she’s asking for her boyfriend

in the cab to the hospital I feel my heart bend

as if bracing for impact

so I do my best impression of a man

and face fact.

it’s supposed to hurt.

a doctor does his best impression of the truth

and spares me his attempts to skirt around the issue.

they can’t stop the bleeding

and the failing use of Sara’s heart

isn’t actually

the failing use of Sara’s heart..

it’s just another way to tell the time.

My darling, Sara

I was holding your hand when you died

and even though the failing use of my right hand

prevented me from feeling you leave..

I tried.”

Shut Up And Say Something


(I do not own this it belongs to Shane Koyczan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

The night you were conceived your mum and dad had sex. I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. I’m not telling you that butterflies taste with their feet. It’s fact. Like during World War II, when days apart two German bombs were dropped on the British Museum. The second one passed through the hole made by the first one, but neither bomb exploded. Just like that magical night with your mum and your dad. It’s weird and freakish, but it happened.

We don’t like to think of our parents having sex. It reminds me of the peanut-butter and butter sandwiches my grandma used to make. It’s gross. But over the period of nine months cells divided and grew into something beautiful. For all intents and purposes you were alone in the womb. You may have shared the space with a brother or a sister, but there was no one there to tell you, “this is going to hurt.” And it did, and it does, but it will always be a fond memory for your parents.

See, I’ve known men who chew on tinfoil. They’re put together like machinery, encased in a skin of granite, then chiselled by hard times into a callous. But all of them will tell you, every mechanical part of them breaks down the first moment they see their little son or daughter. To quote every man I’ve ever known who’s had a child, “it changes you.”

And that makes me sad, knowing that I will never know this change, having discovered at an early age; I can never have children. I still work in terms of “awesome time”, which is awesome, but my junk is actually junk. And it forces me to think of my life in a very final way, that I will not continue after I’m gone. So if I should die today, tell the world the things I could never say. As if by saying them now I’ve somehow said them time and time again. As if yesterday was when I could say something to today. That way the world could hear me as loud and as clear as the year the world discovered I was so far before my time, that my time left me behind to remind time that I’m here today to say that maybe this time is mine.

Me and failure? We only ever speak sign language. We have a limited vocabulary, which means we disagree constantly. And this is not to say I’ve never known failure. I’ve taken her on double dates with embarrassment and humility. During dinner we sit silently watching candles melt into sculptures of all the things we’ve never said but always felt. I’ve got a black belt in the martial arts discipline of emotionally retarded. But I’ve seen people open the lid on a can of worms that they use to bait a hook and go fishing for sympathy. So I know I’m not alone in this. I’m not the only one with problems, and my problems are not unique.

So, every time in the moment before I’m about to speak I remind myself to shut up and say something. To bring myself to each conversation armed with mountains carved into pebbles, and the true story of how and why I did it. Let people know that if my socks smell like shit it’s because I’ve been kicking ass all day. I play two-player conversations with total strangers for no other reason than to make them less strange. We exchange stories like trading cards, and are fine with the fact that we’ve always been rookies, and we’ve never gone pro. And I’m fine with the fact that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. But today, I want to be amazing.

Tomorrow, I want to bring you a piece of paper with the telephone number of a taxi cab company that knows the exact address of my arms, so the day you need a hug I’m going to be there for that. Hear what you have to say without waiting for my turn to speak, let you fall asleep for no other reason than to remind you it’s good to be tired. It only means you’re practicing for another dream. And we’ve got to practice. This is the reason snooze-buttons were invented. The reason we wake up and say “five more minutes”. A dream is a rehab center for insomniacs. I take naps because my parents told me “you can be anything, just follow your dreams.

So, I practice, knowing full well this will never make me perfect. On a long enough timeline everyone fails. Success is not immortal. There are times we bury it like a bone in the backyard, digging deep down, but along the way find that our fingers feature familiar facets that’s found in the search parties we sent out seeking someplace suitable for it to rest. The last words of success were, and will always be, “the least we can do is everything”.

So, do it all, as if life’s too short and you’re too tall. Fall in love as many times as it takes, so when the rest of the world wakes up, you can say, “I got it right this time”. Today I’m living proof that one guy who’s never been into heavy lifting can still raise the roof. I have loved this life. I smile because I have tiny dreams that play hopscotch at the corners of my mouth. And every time I breathe they float, every time I laugh they fly kites. I’ve spent late nights in hospitals watching EKG monitors, realising my heart has a skyline. And I’ve seen too many people who assign window-washers to their eyes so they can watch their lives clearly pass them by. Which is why I try to mark even the most mundane memories into monuments that mark my times as something more than moments.

Like November 21st 1999; walked into a coffee shop, asked a girl out. She said, “I’m busy till the next lunar eclipse”. So I left laughing, knowing that only moments before I had just read an article stating that the next lunar eclipse would be on January 21st of 2000. Two months away to the day. Coincidence? No. It’s spooky. But we did end up going out, and I had a great time up until I told her that story and she said, “that’s crazy. That’s the kind of story you tell your kids.”

There was no one there to tell me, “this is going to hurt”. And it did, and it does. It was, and will always be, a memory that reminds me, I can never have kids. So from time to time, I have to be one. Come to this world armed with curiosity and amazement. Edit the unsent letters of my life into a one-word statement,” yes”. Yes to romantic flashlight-lit dinners when you’ve run out of candles. To handles on pillows so you can hold on to your dreams. To the underdog dogsled teams who use angry cats instead of canines, to landmines filled with confetti, to the steady hands of friends who live like surgeons operating on our broken hearts, building pacemakers from the spare parts of mercy. We spend most of our figuring out what we don’t want. We haunt ourselves with regret, because we almost always bet the odds. We play it safe. We waste time wondering, “what if we’re wrong?” What if we fail, what if we lose, what then?

Well, then you’re a loser. But you’re not alone. There’s a legion of us who have been shot down. On a long enough timeline everyone fails. There’s an entire universe made up of the unsent secret crush emails, a hollow sky filled with the lost details of what it feels like to never know, because we go about our lives never having tried. Feeling justified in our “what if” excuses. What if he/she/them/they/that/it, what if it didn’t?

And I ask, “what if it did?” The kid in me says yes to everything, the love in me says, “shut up and say something.”

Okay... please don't take this down because it says bad words it is all good literature.

Originally posted by Tayyibah Lmao. A few forums have "bad words" in. XD

Sorry i haven't been on here in a while.

Ok.

This dude makes me wanna cry.

Originally posted by MetropalThis dude makes me wanna cry.

Same here.