A New Hope

I’ve tried to recollect the things I did
And why I did them thus
Spent countless days and extensive hours
Reconstructing what little I know.
Letters to you strewn around
Sticky notes placed strategically
All asking
“Where did I go astray?”

Damned if I didn’t see
That I never was inline
I may have felt and indeed did live
But deep within me I was a failure cocked and loaded
Waiting for the hammer to fall
Love was true
Heart was there
Hell, spirit present too
But what good are feelings and poetic device
When hanging from a noose?

I was a fake
A folly really
Someone dead-set on you
So loving and adoring that I didn’t dare let you down
Never wanted you to know I wasn’t an Olympian
I never took that giant leap for mankind
And never did a purple heart find its way upon my breast.
Not much of what I ever seemed was truly what was there
A stoic? No. A brave one? Hah
Rather as scared as scared can be

Frightened you would never love a peon such as I
A man so scared to not succeed he doesn’t try to climb
Up into life’s greatest gift
The feelings of the free
Someone much less refined and handsome
Than you,
The diamond that I failed to see.

My heart now aches for vengeance
Upon its stupid self
My mercurial actions now sustained
As strength and truth unrivaled in magnitude of
Great Everest itself.
I will regain what I have lost
And never let it go.

A hope!
That’s it a fragile dream
Something to keep a weary man alive
Surely that is enough to bring you back
Who dare defy a hope so that it wither into dust
As Hughes did say a dream deferred
Does dutifully explode.
Why would you ever wish that for me?
No hope can be ignored.

I hope you think upon the good
The happy and the light
I dream you see back to those days that we lay
Intertwined
Upon beaches
Gazing into the dying sun
Reborn the next day,
Anew
Given life
Given
Hope

I hope you love me
Love me so
And feel just like I never left
That I have been there all along
Its true you know
I never left your side

I saw you scrape your knee
I saw that fender bender
I also witnessed that 4.0
How could I ever miss that one?
I always knew you were smart.
You loved me right?

And hey!
Don’t forget the night you stayed up studying while your roommates partied
And did your very best
You never even yelled at them
I was so amazed…
I was about to lose my cool
You see I have been watching you
And within your soul I’ve spent my days.
I have seen all that there is to take in
The good
The bad
And the intermittent.
I also have seen how you make it each and every day without me

Hope…
I don’t have hope at all
No dreams to be deferred
What good is hope when life goes on?
Leaving me a victim of my own circumstance
A wounded soldier left to bleed out
Alone
On a dusty road far from home
I am done fighting this war

Dreams…
Dreams are for those who can
For those who see the good
I only see the bad
I have accepted my fate
The life of the sinner
I wake every morning alone
Eat my oatmeal
Run to get in shape and pray to find my way
And when the day is done
The grades are in
The dinner is downed
You are not in your seat at the table
Its empty

Empty as is my heart
Empty as is my life
Empty as is the deepest, darkest section of Hell itself
Saved for those who will one day break the mold evil has cast.
People who are truly stupid
People life me
The lonely
The ones who never found a new hope

What good is searching for a new hope
When all I have is saved for you?