Excerpts from a beautiful spoken word poem by the Canadian poet Shane Koyczan:
You see, I took class on listening
So I could hear something positive
And then live happily with the mindset
That will give me altitude when needed.
I’ve got a confidence so deep seeded
It’s growing reverse.
And I rehearse handshakes with titans
Because even giants need someone to look up to.
And if we agree to disagree
The we never to the time it takes
To analyze the mistakes we made.
We stay at a stalemate
where the rate of progress
Is equal to a snails pace
In a rat race where people chase fairy-tales.
Hoping all the happy endings
get married to the tragic beginnings,
And all the ever-afters last forever.
And I’m the first to admit,
I sure wish there was a Never Land,
Where time never takes us by the hand
And forces us to grow old.
I wish that every lie told would make our noses grow,
That way we’d know who the politicians should be.
Let me go,
So I don’t cut your heel
trying to fit your foot into a glass slipper
I already smashed against the sidewalk.
Let me wander through the flock
and show that wolves have got teeth too,
And the they have bitten through my tongue
Every time I have had to hold it.
And I have had to hold it,
I have held it.
And I’ve got the words,
I’ve got the words so sharp
They’d have to drive you to the hospital just to stop the bleeding.
I’m tired of you needing us to be friends,
Let me go, so I don’t slip and say something like,
They only person who lets me down more than God,
Is you.
See, I didn’t mean too,
But somewhere along the way
I grew a mouth like a cannon,
So the next time you ran in and out of my secret lives
I’d have some knives of my own I could through.
And I know my aim is getting better
Because now I can say your name in a prayer.
It’s right there, next to the Hallelujah
And the goodbye.
I tried to fit and fill a Cathedral
Where the needful kneel and feel nothing now.
I some how believe you less and less.
And I guess I trust you about as much as I should,
which could be another way to say
I wonder if I ever did.
I wonder who’s hiding behind each eyelid
when you had to close your eyes just to touch me.
I wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t let you use my own physicality
To weaken my arms and legs against escape.
I wonder what you did with that cape that I use to keep
Hanging in my closet.
Let me go,
Like an atheist caught in an undertow
Hoping to nothing that maybe he was wrong.
Let me belong to myself again,
Then stand back to back with a mountain and say
Am I taller yet?
‘Cause I kinda got my heart set on being huge.
And I figure, maybe with a bigger heart
I can love strangers a little more.
Laughter can be my encore at every smile.
And I could compile pyramids against hurricanes
And I’d have hands like cranes
And lift the heavy weight of loneliness
From the shoulders of the rejected
Because the world needs a friend.
And maybe I could bend minds around the concept that
depression is dangerous
And we can’t afford to have 9-1-1 dismiss on happiness
As if it wasn’t a God damn emergency.
And we should be sending out hugs
as if they were blood, food and rescue teams.
And we should be holding the hands of the comfortless,
Teaching them to walk balance beams,
And yet it seems more likely
That you would keep me in a constant state of unhappy,
Which lends a truth to the theory of misery and company.
‘Cause a story’s only true if you live it.
The minute you give it a personal touch
It becomes something that the facts were based on
And you could argue endlessly over wrong and right,
But day and night occupy both space between dusk and dawn.
So, let me go, because the truth is,
I’m gone.