I never had the chance to be young.
You know?
What I mean is,
I missed out on things that are important
or part of youth because somehow,
I was tricked
or robbed in a way
that I believed in the inaccuracies
and the varying concepts
of love,
or the lack thereof.
I never had a prom or the basic rites of passage,
and to some, I hear that I am making a big deal
out of nothing
but to them, this is nothing.
To me, this is something.
And so,
I don’t know what this means to you
or to anyone else for that matter
and nor do I know how this sounds
but at the same time,
maybe you get it
and maybe I don’t have to care (anymore)
about who understands
or who agrees.
Maybe you already know enough about me
which, to be honest,
I already know that you do.
But . . .
Maybe you lost your youth too,
in a way, or at least in some regards,
which is not to say that you and I were never young.
Of course we were.
We knew each other when we were young.
Remember?
When I say “lost our youth,” I mean
that perhaps we were
misguided by unrealistic standards,
or maybe I (or you) lost to a hope or to a dream
or maybe you lost your youth to an idea
or to a concept, like say, for example;
people can often lose to an image
of what it means to be perfect
or we lose to an idea
that somehow dictates
what a body should look like
which, in fact, is wrong because beauty
is more than specific and not exclusive
but more so, beauty is also an inclusive term,
even to those who unincluded me (or you)
but still; no one has the right
to claim the handle on beauty
or to shade the brilliant fixtures of say,
the way you smile,
which is beyond compare.
But we lose, sometimes.
We lose to bad or poorly informed ideas
or we lose to a proposed idea
of what beauty is
or what it should be.
But what is beauty?
What does it mean to be beautiful?
Is it me?
Am I beautiful?
Have I ever been?
Or could I be?
And I ask this because, to be clear,
I have been born and bred
and misguided and lied to,
or stolen, and like the aftermath
of bullies or people who decide to put others down,
I somehow believed
that yeah . . .
this is me, ugly,
to some degree.
But I don’t want to be ugly or even beautiful.
No, I just want to be because the rest is only child’s play,
and I never learned to play so much
(when I was a child),
at least not fairly.
Maybe this is just a case of timing
and should we have met at an earlier time
or in some alternate way, or in an alternate life
then maybe would could have been
in love, together, as in right there
at first sight
and knowing then what we know now,
perhaps we could have stepped in for each other,
or learned to intercept one another
or rescued each other from the bullshit lies
or anything otherwise
that would disrupt our truths
or disturb our lies,
which kept us from recognizing
how beautiful we truly are.
But let me be clear:
I mean this in the sense that
whereas, if we could go back to who we used to be,
and somehow trick the history books
and force them to connect us,
as if fate were tricked into a kindness
and allowed for a permanent rewind
so that maybe, yes, my dreams would be true
and we could start again, anew, and re-do our years
to make up for what was lost.
Do you understand?
And if this were so,
or if the love Gods were to smile at us like this,
you and I could combine
or reverse the hands of time
like old souls in youthful bodies,
and then maybe two lives could have been saved
and two souls could have been spared
or we could have rescued each other
from the inaccurate ideas or the unfair biases
that somehow taught us that hey,
you and I
are less than we are.
But that’s not true. We are not less.
We are more
and we are more now than ever before.
I wish I knew you then — or yes,
more selfishly, I wish that you knew me then
because this way,
whatever life said or showed me
and regardless of the unfortunate lessons
and notwithstanding
the inaccurate teachers who taught us
poorly given truths, that maybe we were ugly
or stupid
and I say this because worst of all,
as I sit by and view you
as a loving bystander, mesmerized
and blown-away in complete and total disbelief;
it amazes me to see you, and I mean
this literally amazes me,
how you never noticed
your own beauty or recognized that you, above all,
are breathtaking
and incredible.
I swear, we lose to the ideas of
inaccurate beauty.
We lose to diets or how our body
“should be”
and we lose to assumptions
which tell us what beauty is
or what beauty is supposed to be
as if beauty is perfection
and perfection can only come
in some commercialized form
But that’s not true
Or
as I see it,
what you see or say might be your imperfections,
I say no.
I say this is what makes you beautiful,
at least to me.
If you’ll have me, that is
(imperfections and all).
I say that love cannot be kept or concealed
or encapsulated in nothing else but a word
and yes, I say a word without substance is only a word
and whether the word has meaning or not,
I have come to the understanding that my definition
of you, and your beauty,
is perhaps specific to me, which is fine, because trust me,
this does not make you any less beautiful
than you already are.
No,
this only makes you more beautiful
to me . . .
I wish I could have met you.
I wish I could have known you
back then, as kids
just to start out sooner
rather than later.
I wish we were allowed to rewind the clock
and go back to be old souls in young bodies
because if I had the chance to go back
and I could know then what I know now,
well—
I would jump at the chance
no matter what the consequences would be . . .
I would jump right now
from any height.
The truth is, I don’t know much, but
I do know that when it comes to being with you
I am nothing short of unstoppable
and happy,
and, of course, this allows me the freedom
to become perfectly imperfect.
I am only a man.
I am a child too.
I am flawed, and I have a list of shortcomings.
I have a history that replays
and rejects the happier mottoes,
and I admit to this, same as I admit to my frustrations
and the battles in my head which lead to an outside battle
of which, I call my chaos.
But yes, there is more to life
and yes, the good outweighs the bad,
by far.
I have to remember this
otherwise, my chaos wins.
I am only a man, grown and perhaps outdated
and antiquated in some regards
but, I want to be young again,
and brave
and free,
and beautiful.
Just like you
I want to kiss the night goodbye.
Or no, I want a goodnight kiss
that resumes, first thing in the morning.
I want to be “enough”
and never question me
in your eyes
and to believe
and to think and feel
and to dance,
like two lovers who dance the meringue
or to be out beneath the lights
in some hot night place beneath the moon
and yes, I want everyone to be jealous
or envious
because, to be honest,
I have looked upon so many
with jealous or envious eyes, and now,
it’s not that I want revenge
or that I want to dive in the wishing wells of life
and take my wishes back,
as in, all of them
one quarter for each wish.
No.
I suppose no matter how old I am,
I’m still, “just a kid,”
especially when it comes to love
or you.
And that’s what I want
to love, or kiss
or do the dance
and to smile, once more
at you
and how I know that tomorrow
you’ll wake up next to me
in my arms . . .
Forever ~
The Written Addiction 