WerepupJeremy: poetry

Do Not Put Flowers in my Hair.

art

I do not want to be envisioned with flowers in my hair.

Or be seen with my back arched, eyes smiling at the sun.

I want to be seen with my head down,

My neck stiff from memorizing every crack in my floor

As I pace back and forth in the night, because I’m too afraid to go to sleep.

I do not want my shoulders broad,

But instead rounded,as I hunch my back to sit,

As I hold my mouth open when I’m not talking,

Yet can’t speak up when in public.

I do not want you to put the flowers I pick from the stems,

As we walk home in my hair,

They do not belong there.

As if you try to paint me like something not from this earth,

As if to remove the dirt from under my uncut fingernails that make me so flawed.

As if to edit my edges that don’t rhyme, from your lullaby.

Put those flowers on the ground where I leave them.

Leave them at my feet where they no longer dance in the breeze

But lie flattened beneath my stomps,

Destroyed by my carelessness.

Do not envision me by the shore with golden skin,

When I am pale from winter’s glow and cannot swim.

Do not exaggerate the secrets of my eyes,

When you tell me I seem to eternally squint.

Do not envision me with flowers in my hair.

It is not the truth.

If you must change me.

If I, as I am, am not worthy of your pen.

Not ready for your canvas,

Then see me with two giant heads at war,

As I buoy back and forth unable to make up my mind.

See me with my dragon’s tail as I tear our pictures off the wall.

See me with my harpie’s wings as I flee from every broken word.

See me with my ogre’s growl as I curse the names of stolen dreams.

If you must change me.

Make me more the monster I already am.

But don’t you dare put flowers in my hair.

By: WerepupJeremy
Photography by: Melissa Cheng

11:38
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Reflection #3: Lost Words

Sometimes I would just watch him drift away.

And disappear into words he’d never tell me.

Get lost in conversations in which I had no role.

But I always understood.

I understood that between the real world and his own,

Between him and the oceans in his mind,

He would be searching for himself.

Looking for that elusive ‘unknown’ to make sense of his being;

A being that refused to be personified through what has been seen

And what has been known alone.

But needed ears that would listen to what was never said,

and eyes clear enough to envision instead of see.

A being made of dreams yet to be dreamt, and sins not yet born.

So when he says “huh” for the twelfth time

because your words only danced around his ears.

Do not get upset.

Just repeat.

He’ll hear you this time.

Maybe even smile.

Mostly at himself, but partially at you,

because he’ll notice he’s being rude again.

He’ll never say this out loud,

because like always his words are just for him. His world, is never for you.

But that’s okay.

Because one day he’ll find himself between one world and the next,

and he’ll reach for your arm to anchor him to a shore he can trust.

A land in which for mere seconds he may stand without falling.

Where his body can lie still instead of float adrift at sea.

And he’ll smile just for you,

and he’ll say those hidden words with his deep voice.

And they’ll dance around your ears, like children in the sun,

and you’ll be glad that you repeated those thirteen times.

Cause it’ll be just right.

And then after that moment, he’ll go again;

his words running home,

the laughter in his melody fading in the air like a broken note.

But it’ll be alright. Because you’ll feel it was worth the glimpse.

So as I speak, I’ll watch him drift away.

He was never in my grip.

By: WerepupJeremy

Photography by: Melissa Cheng

11:31
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Reflection #2: The Losing Battle

It was hard to watch him fight for nothing in particular.

To strive for no real goal.

To watch him try his best in the day for a rest he would not get in the night.

Not when his worries shone like stars in his darkened mind:
Endless and Multiplying.

It was hard to watch him try when I knew he would have to try again,

to always try again.

There was no prize.

No victory song to sing in loud glee.

No happy tears to shed because the journey would finally be complete.

And he would finally be the winner.

And I would be by his side, and our laughs would echo across galaxies,

sharing the tale of his survival.

Proclaiming through golden notes that he had won, and that the world could indeed be conquered.

And that dreams which are chased could indeed be caught.

But this was not to be.

And the tears shed remained sad,

and our song only remained a whisper of hopes that would not rise from their slumber.

Hopes that refused to be awoken from words to breathe their own life,

To become real.

Instead laughter remained trapped beneath sighs,

Pulling themselves out our mouths with great force.

Taunting us with a reality that refused to walk on the tips of its toes,

Instead crashing down on the earth with great stomps and vigor,

Reminding us how easily we are shaken.

Reminding us of how easily we are thrown about by a world that refuses to be conquered-

But challenges us to try as we bruise for its own pleasure.

Our scars the scorecard of a game rigged to be lost.

The challenger receives no spoils.

Just merely an invitation to try again.

And as the new day would dawn, so he would.

Try again.

Because tired bones never stop til they are returned to dust,

and the will never out of reach til fingers are unable to grasp.

And as hard as it was to watch him lose.

It was even harder not to hope that one day he would win.

By: WerepupJeremy
Photography by: Melissa Cheng

09:16
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Reflection #1: The Lost Ones

I often wondered what would have happened.

What would have changed if we knew then what we know now.

If it would matter?

Would we have tread more cautiously down a familiar path?

More alert in our own suspicion

More conscious of our own expiration- the finality of our beings?

Or would we have ran and ran more fearlessly,

more carelessly to our own demise, on a road with no name,

but vast promises.

A Street with no signs but countless doors,

all lit from above by a traitor or a friend.

Would we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by the promises of a deceitful moon

for gifts we knew it could not grant?

Gifts of lands, it’s rays have never shone;

corners still plunged in darkness, but drawn by dreams of the young and the foolish.

I wonder, would we have battled our odds more courageously?

Or would we have surrendered with a smile?

Knowing that the battle was not to be won but enjoyed along the way.

That maybe losing was winning in that we would have been absolved of past lives

Lives that didn’t meet their full potential.

Lives of wrong dreams, that took right turns, to leave us with nothing.

Would ambition have meant nothing to her this time around?

The informed time around.

Or would his hope be wasted yet again, as it always was

in some more powerful unknown that refused to be seen?

Would we, if permitted,be found for once by the sun?

Or would we, tired, continue to wander around……

Lost.

By: WerepupJeremy
Photography by: Melissa Cheng

10:39
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