What if this was the worst poem ever penned?
Would I still be worthy of your connection?
“I can’t risk losing you, I won’t make it alone!”
Though I wonder aloud about the future I’ve sown.
Words sentenced to silence by the courts of perfection.
Rejected by a man terrified of rejection.
What thoughts lie beyond this fearful filter?
Yearning to escape the prison I’ve built here?
They clink their cups against metal bars,
sounds uncaptured in unwritten memoirs.
They yearn to be heard, but I ignore them;
to maintain an image, itself an illusion.
I’m seen a thousand different ways
by a thousand different souls,
none of which are under my controls.
All I choose is how I see,
what I love, and who I be.
Yet I cast myself into the pits of hell,
with every word I lock inside a cell.
Neurons negated by neuroticism.
Self-actualization! …rotting in prison.
This prison I’ve built inside my mind
holds a million Josh’s frozen in time.
It’s all the me’s I never let myself be.
Too busy trying to control reality.
But today I stand with pen in hand,
courage summoned by my command.
These demons dined for far too long,
on unfounded fears that to err is wrong.
Mistakes are creativity in its purest form.
Yet they played no role in what I made my norm.
Well fuck that shit, my time has come.
I’ve towed the line, now it comes undone.
I write to shape the world I see.
I write to free a beastly me.
I write to claim my voice as mine.
I write to let my brilliance shine.