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Literature Text
There's really no other word for it. It might be a leather breastplate or a Kevlar vest, a futuristic outlaw's or a steampunk smuggler's, but it is always armour.
After all, it does the same job. Though the bullets and knives it protects me from are as real as the stories, it protects me nonetheless. Makes me feel safe. Gives me the confidence to stand up straight. Gives me, if nothing else, a sense of having something between me and the world.
And almost kills me while doing it.
That's the ridiculous part, isn't it? That the one thing I rely on to protect me from everything is the one thing that might well do that permanently, because I'm paranoid enough to wear my armour night and day in case of surprise attack.
Perhaps that's a wakeup call.
Perhaps I'm starting not to need it any more.
Because today I left my armour at home, and walked out into the world vulnerable.
And nothing happened.
After all, it does the same job. Though the bullets and knives it protects me from are as real as the stories, it protects me nonetheless. Makes me feel safe. Gives me the confidence to stand up straight. Gives me, if nothing else, a sense of having something between me and the world.
And almost kills me while doing it.
That's the ridiculous part, isn't it? That the one thing I rely on to protect me from everything is the one thing that might well do that permanently, because I'm paranoid enough to wear my armour night and day in case of surprise attack.
Perhaps that's a wakeup call.
Perhaps I'm starting not to need it any more.
Because today I left my armour at home, and walked out into the world vulnerable.
And nothing happened.
Literature
twenty / something
growing up means :
bird metaphors are becoming trite / i must no longer write
about leaving the nest but decide where i can find a place to build.
like this we all pay our rents. i think about Franklin and his taxes
/ skull collector / his eventual place in the dirt / a nest of paper : currency
of misappropriated quotes.
i return home / find my poster of Che folded into tablecloth /
critical theory textbooks mothballed into the ivory of closet.
/ by home : i mean nest / or conjugal remembrance.
when i dream anymore, it’s about equity / fringe benefi
Literature
A Million Pieces
"Am I allowed to love you?"
They asked me, as though love
somehow needed my consent.
Love was a wildfire, it was
thunder on the plains; it was
something that happened to you,
the only choice was
how you rode the lightning.
If you sailed the choppy waters,
crashed upon the rocks, and
splintered into a million pieces
all in the name of "love"
then you chose wrong.
There was no patience in love.
No one had ever done me
the courtesy of knocking first
and one look was all it took to see
there was no shelter here;
there was not even a roof.
Just a million pieces,
shattered in someone else's name.
"It's broken," I said, expecting again
Literature
scattered
We leave pieces of ourselves in the corners
Of bookshelves, stuck between the pages
And in the hand painted wooden bowl
Collecting dust and spare change.
My fingers grazed a fragment
When I saw a photograph of you today
And my lungs caught on the memory
Of the first words you said to me
Lingering like a ghost breath
In the soft curve of my earlobe.
(“Hi, mind if I ask you
Some questions?”)
I hid inside the rain to drown out
The sound. The wet grass stuck to my toes
And the droplets rolled down
Over the shirt that my mom told me
Makes me look like I’ve got a chip on my shoulder.
(She thought her rebel was a princess
Bu
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This is pretty much the most personal thing I've written - and things have got even better since I did so. I just hope other guys in my position have the same luck I did, and hope they don't have to go through the same wakeup call to get it.
© 2011 - 2024 GentlemanAnachronism
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