The Young Are Mighty
Location
See map: Google Maps
As a young, stubborn girl of half your height and size,
I can offer the world such a unique prize
For its making me of me was not only deliberate but true,
And it calls out for me, saying:
Do what you do,
Never let the feelings of others slip by!
For perhaps they are only searching for somewhere to cry,
Or for something that will drown their sorrows and dye,
Their black nights into pastel yellows and white.
It is true they may also be in desire to behold,
The greatest stories written like prophecies to their own.
Or to try and shine bright as the hours of sun last,
To then maybe collapse once the daylight is past.
Alas, searching for a miracle is a prospect as bright,
As urging dampened firewood to ignite,
Or as calling out for a ride to an empty highway,
Or as reaching for the stars with your feet on the driveway,
Or as telling a secret and hoping it will not be retold,
Or as painting a masterpiece that will never be sold.
But you will frame it in your heart and hang it in your mind,
And do nothing but clean and paint the walls behind,
For a wall smothered by excess art is not something you want -
The product will barely be praised, if you are lucky enough.
But as a figure double my size, you must be wondering:
Why would I tell you of such a truth I am pondering?
Truths are to be concealed in the black and the white,
The smoke of solitude barred by the filter of what's right.
For what's correct is a box, and society's the cardboard,
Or the wood,
Or the lead,
Or the miserably hard-worn,
Back of a man whose too weighed by love to stand straight,
Or the thinning bones of a woman whose diagnosis was late.
Or the flesh of a boy whose skin tells awful memories,
Or the breath of a girl that demands only sympathy.
And at night, how is it fair that you label them so,
And that their owl eyes are wide and yours are glued closed?
And when you open them in the morning, you need to tear the retinas,
As to never see what is underneath, or even more, right in front of ya?
As a girl with wider eyes than they are truly meant to be,
I will see through the facade of others in obscurity.
And from my recollections, it is easy enough for me to say,
That I have learned a great deal in my fifteen years of age.
I have learned that masks are translucent to the fragile-hearted,
And that absence feels worse when two are not truly parted,
And that anger is triggered from the pain in a person's chest,
And is not an emotion standing alone from the rest.
I've found that neglect is more painful when there is no good-bye,
When you have slowly become a whisper and no longer a cry.
And that the sting is worse when you are in fact the one that has lied,
Or you are the person who's the thorn in another man's side.
And when hope is utterly lost,
And you are dragging the whole world like a cross,
The most ironic part is not the suffering,
But that, as you carry that firewood, life is still buffering.
Nothing will ever stop for you, in time,
Even if there's a dagger at your throat,
Or your heart,
Or your spine.
Like that man who fired for his country and lost,
Or the woman whose lover left her to weep in the frost.
But as her tears became ice and his became embers,
They vowed to each other to always remember,
The decaying souls that were always left behind.
Like a music box that one just needs to rewind.
You see, good Sir, I believe in freedom of speech,
Although I am only a child, as you most admirably preach.
I believe in the liberty of those who are wronged,
Who must be able to compose and sing their own songs.
Anarchy is only in march if higher powers are resistant,
And quite fairly, that is when the neglected become insistent.
I carry a cross that will spark fire and frost,
And once that miracle rises, it is then, when control will be lost.
I am the daughter of the man who fired for his country, and was tossed,
Out into the ice to find a girl lying in the frost.
I am the child of the girl who's husband's fire never burned her,
He is merely a wretched old man, who now sings the words of Turner -
The only worst thing than a battle won is a battle lost,
And so I ask for no war - just that you understand this at all costs:
Never do let the feelings of others slip by
For the young are mighty, and the small are sly.
Because a million whispers can charge into a battle cry,
And we will surge in our sweet, music-box lives,
Each of us all with framed paintings by our sides.