POEM: Growing Up teacherwriterguy: This one was written actually right before the separation. The stbx had taken a trip for a week. I'd used the time then to clean the house top to bottom - partially because it needed it and partially as a symbolic gesture. She'd become convinced that our problems couldn't be changed, and I was trying to show her that even things that we feel like are unchangeable can be changed when we put some effort into them - like things that we hadn't cleaned in a while that it just took the effort and the motivation to clean.
Anyway - she returned home from the week, jaw dropped at the state of the house and there was a good conversation about all of it. Of course, when I returned from work the next day - much of the work that I had done had been re-messed up and recovered.
And I ended up thinking about my life, and the struggles in marriage, and where it was all heading.
Thus it led to the writing of this poem...
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Growing Up
This is what growing up means:
It essentially means that everything is broken,
that for the first time you can see the decay.
Where once you assumed there'd be someone to clean,
now you realize that you're supposed to have answers.
Really it's no use asking, "Why?"
Because the real truth about asking why
is that you're hoping someone else knows what it means.
You're hoping mommy's voice is the one that answers
the phone. That the lines and wires haven't been broken.
You hope for a therapist to whom you can come clean;
Someone who knows better than you how to stop the tide of decay.
Growing up means looking at mildewy decay
on the bathub and not knowing why
it will never be clean.
Growing up means
that the radio is broken,
so silent are the voices that are giving the answers.
Growing up means conversations about answers
that inevitably, eventually, relentlessly decay
into tears and recriminations lying there broken,
while you sit there wondering why
and what it all means.
Those grown-upy conversations never are clean.
Growing up leads to lives that are tarnished rather than clean
as they inch towards the day when mortality brings answers.
We make up this fiction of death, what it means
as a revelation instead of the truth of decay.
We spend our lives waiting for the response to the "Why?"
and hoping it's not a promise God made to be broken.
And if He should speak, what pact would be broken?
Is it innocence of knowing that kept myself clean?
Is that really why
from the moment we receive answers
our ability to feel joy begins to decay?
Can that possibly be what growing up means?
The truth? I've been broken. I have no answers.
I started to decay from the first day I was clean.
Thus I wonder endlessly, "Why? Why? Why?
Why is it this is what growing up means?
Re:POEM: Growing Up OldSchool: TWIG,
I've never tried to really put down my thoughts into verses, but I could really visualize your situation. Dang good, man. Maybe one day I can be as eloquent and thoughtful as what you've expressed in this poem.
It's definitely a gift to live in the moment as the mind captures the importance of the surroundings and to put it on paper. Truly a gift.
OS
Re:POEM: Growing Up jen: twg~
this one struck me as I read it...sad and more cynical than usual, but that makes sense given when you wrote it.
I love the second stanza - how true that we look to others to give us answers, to clean everything up for us sometimes.
this one really made me think...
mtmo
Re:POEM: Growing Up LostTeacher: TWG:
a guy with poetry skills will win the hearts of the ladies anytime!!
and..... i just love reading your stuff, because it's so honest.
Re:POEM: Growing Up teacherwriterguy: Thanks for the responses... this one _was_ a bit different for me, though, like you said MTMO, written at a particular time in a particular mindset. And of course it had its story behind it - I felt I should share that before posting the poem so you all didn't wonder what the heck I was thinking. :)
Regarding the second stanza comment - that's absolutely what I was thinking. At least for me, there came a moment where I kept running through all the people I knew and friends and family, and then I realized I was looking for someone to give me answers that really weren't out there. Sometimes there's no one thing you can do or thing you can say to make a situation better.
RE: OS talking about wanting to be able to capture a moment in words - this is going to sound odd, maybe, but I don't think it's something that came naturally to me. Like basketball or cooking or any other skill, there's actually things to practice and learn. One of the things I REALLY want to look at is performance poetry - I recently helped host the school Poetry Slam and I was just overawed watching some of the professional poets we brought in and how they performed their poems. It was just a whole different realm I hadn't thought of.
As for poetry winning the hearts of women - lol - I'll let you know when it happens :) Just writing poems to write them atm!
twg
