Toronto Poetry Slam

There are times when words fail us
When saying anything to describe an emotion only soils the memories of the moments we keep
When description becomes a dishonor
And so I say I no longer see disaster splattered in the Rorschach train tracks of your intentions, but butterflies and crowns
I no longer drown in sorrow for the lost tomorrow’s I swim in hope for the future; for the chance to see something of you come back to me
To us
We no longer distrust every bell and whistle screaming metal braking in the night;
The shadowed corners of my office no longer filled with fright at the sight of your ghost;
I hold on to the picture of you as innocent;
I cling to the sweet things you would draw that we never knew enough about;
I have let go of the doubt that this was somehow all my fault
I whisper dreams as requiems for your abandon and courage
And should I happen across your apparition I wish to find you in solid condition;
As if this afterlife light would have healed you by now;
That somehow through the twists of scrap and shark’s tooth of truth
You have found peace
We no longer carry grief like buckets of terror;
I surrender my resentments at the foot of whatever alter I have left;
This stage; this page, this crumpled paper heart
I have started to build new temples for your calm;
I have stood silent at dawn praying you could forgive me
And I wonder if I will ever forgive myself;
We no longer melt into portraits of ourselves at family functions;
We are trying to stand proud;
Even as I feel the deep well of sadness pooling at your father’s plateau;
There is not a day that doesn’t strike your absence like a gong in our hearts
And there is still song enough for all of us
At dusk when I recoil from blackened angles of wall meeting ceiling
I suspend my disbelief long enough to talk to you;
I’m still trying to tell you I’m sorry; that I miss you; that it never should have had to happen
I wait for the day I can say with honesty that to write it feels a mockery
For everything it means to me,
That you mean to me;
That my philosophy has always been fallacious;
But I am gracious for what I knew of you;
For the love you let grow in me, whatever you saw in me;
Even if I was the silent fog; too clouded to listen closely;
If I was the waterfall too concerned with the edge to observe the quiet curve of your rough river;
I was a giver, but what I passed onto you was too much strong stuff and not enough love;
I am reading the skyline as Braille these days
In hopes that admitting my blindness might help me feel something other than remorse;
But let this be our Morse code;
So you always know – I love you;
It is too true that I would sully your memory to speak too clearly
So I say today I saw god in the mountain and my grief is amounting to an empty cave;
I want to be brave to say I see you;
I feel you and I will carry your tattered heart always;
Not as disaster splattered Rorschach’s,
But as butterflies and crowns;
Because you were a prince among men
And you earned your wings,
Long ago.