More Poetry

I got a comment today on an old post where I wrote about Poetry on the Bus . The person said that it was his brother that wrote that, and that he had a poem too. I did a Google search, and I'm not sure, but I'm thinking this is the brother. This kid is pretty talented too, and according to this, he's only in the 7th or 8th grade. Gosh....I can't imaging being that articulate or that deep at that age. I'm not sure I'm that deep now! So Brendan...if you're out there....here's your poem. I love it! Thanks for stopping by my blog.

By the way....as you might note....these two brothers go to the Denver School of the Arts. I went to see Aida there a couple of months ago, and I'd have to say that I enjoyed it as much, if not more than many of the productions I've seen at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. I'd say dollar for dollar I got way more for my money at the School of the Arts.

Brendan Craine
Denver School of the Arts
Seventh and Eighth Grade

Locked Up
If I listen closely enough, I can still hear another heartbeat,
which is locked my soul in a padded room in a hotel where you tip the
bellhop with a smile that I've never been able to pay. I can never reach low
enough in my own body to find what still breathes there, feeding off the
tendrils of feeling I can still poke through my own skin. My mother departed
and left me in my cage of a crib, chained down to a world with manacles of
faith, where emotion is a sign of weakness.
I can't break the bonds and run free in the pastures of my brain because
it is a strange place. I only know the dim black lines that crisscross my vision
and blur until they become iron bars, and I could wrench at them with my
hands until my fingers bled, but I still couldn't let myself out or let a single
tear fall and melt the metal, pouring my essence from the cage I built around
myself until I drowned.
If I listen closely enough, I can still hear my own breathing, and the cage
becomes a womb, where I've already pasted my memories on the wall like
posters, hung with biting words I've been forced to keep down. I've wanted
to trace the tendrils, venturing down the horrible cramped tunnels of feeling
to find out what is living inside of me, but it is a one-way journey and I have
been raised to like the surface, taking privacy only in the dark little room I keep
badly furnished in my head, just to have somewhere I can't hear my heartbeat.
If I listen closely enough, I can still hear someone crying,
Thoughts turning themselves into shining words that pour down my face in
rivers that can't be heard for fear of being locked once more in the badly furnished
room where I can only hear what I've kept in there, and the piece of
me that still wants to crawl into bed and not wake up. If I could just curl up
and cease to think maybe I could find that smile I've kept hidden under the
mattress just so that I could finally check into the room where I could finally
feel the warm embrace of my mother's heartbeat.