Lullaby

Lullaby was one of the first #spokenword pieces I wrote and performed at a #poetryslam. Much like the song Epitaph, this piece is an amalgamation of personalities taken from friends who suffered from #addiction. It was inspired by the poem "Human the Death Dance" by Buddy Wakefield who is, in my opinion, one of the best poets alive at the moment. The third line is a direct homage to that poem, in which a character tattoos "forgive me" on his wrists. If you have not heard this piece before, I highly suggest you Youtube it.

Lullaby

"I've been waiting my entire life to tell you that I'm dying,
and I figured I'd finally get it over with.
So here I am, carving forgive me
into my teeth, so every time that I speak
I can still say that I'm sorry.
More years have passed in the last than I care to remember
but I could never forget:

In eighth grade my chorus teacher always told me,
'Michael, you'll never be good enough,'
and it always excited me because it reminded me of my mother.
On the last day of school she smiled,
her teeth jagged like a train wreck,
she didn't say a word,
but I knew exactly what she meant.

In high school I fell in love with a roadside bomb waiting to be detonated
by a passing glance.
Every time she blew up,
she'd pick the pieces of herself off of bathroom floors
mixed with the medicine she never needed. She had
The Disappointment.
One day she caught me staring, smiled, walked over, and hugged me...
she smelled like a lonely night.
She looked me dead in the eyes and said,
'Don't worry about me boy. I don't hate my life,
I just fell in love with stormy weather
and when my head clears up
I put it back into the fog where it belongs.'
We made love to each others' broken promises,
and I sang her to sleep when she got tired of chasing everything else."

At that point Michael turned to me and asked if it was all a dream
as if saying yes would make it any less real.

I nodded.

He turned away, tied his arm up, and shot the blues directly into his veins.
He sang me to sleep that night.
When I woke up,
I looked over a section that he hadn't read aloud. It said:

I did not address this to anyone
because it was meant for everyone
and no one at all.
There is a time when it is neither day or night.
It just is.
As we are. Forever. Everything
and nothing at all.

Today, I believe him.
Yesterday I didn't,
and tomorrow I probably won't either,
but what I do know is that somewhere,
between Heaven and a hard place,
Michael is singing
and god is wishing he had a voice like that.