Grow Up
The room I enter forgotten and empty
Old crumpled books lie on the floor like leaves
The once grand table, once so furnished and polished
Now little more than termite food
The shelves like soldiers awaiting orders
Orders from a captain that has long been dead
A small light shines through a hole in the ceiling
A hole lined with the jagged teeth of old crossbeams
As this sunlight falls like golden water
It falls upon a small alcove where once a child sat
In this alcove there grows, resolute and determined
A small flower, its roots thrusting deep down,
Its leaves opening for a warm embrace
This flower that has grown from small seed
That a child once placed there
In a time, not so long ago, that is now so far away
I am a statue now, cold and barren
No longer the child with the warm heart who could plant,
A seed.
Author: MrKijani (True Name Withheld)
When I wrote this poem I was sitting in my room, I have a
very messy room (even after cleaning it partially), I remember looking around
and seeing a pile of books with some dust on top of them. I got the image of an
old abandoned building, with a few old books strewn about, decayed, broken,
left to die. I turned this building into a grand library; I imagined it filled
with people, and glorious tables to read at, with comfy chairs and thousands of
books. I picture it going bankrupt, closing down and the books that weren't
accepted by donation got left there. I imagined a small girl, crawling through
a boarded up window, finding the books and reading them. But the furniture was
gone, so she found a small area in the wall, one where a statue had once stood
perhaps, and she crawled in there and that’s where she read the books. Well one
day she had to leave that town and her library. So in parting memory she planted
a seed in a mound of dirt she’d brought in. Too young and innocent to know
better. Everyone grows older; it’s a natural flow of time. But I think that
some of us lose touch with the person we were as kids. Kids are innocent,
forgiving and above all, they are generous. As we grow older these attributes
lessen, grow harder, and lose their meaning. A “statue now, cold and barren”.
I think that all of my poems are based off of emotions I
feel. As a result some have an angry tone, others are full of warmth. But this
one is not really an emotion; it’s more a sense of loss. That feeling that as
grow older and “mature” we lose the part of ourselves that is the nicest and
purest thing. Sure you can’t have a political debate about Canada’s government
and the Conservative scandal with a 6 year old, but you can talk with a child
and you feel almost freer. I talked with a kid about his dentist one day; he
was so enthusiastic about it. Even the painful parts he described in a bubbly
bright voice. How can something so innocent and pure “grow up”? Do we really
grow up, or are humans just bred to believe that when we see everything in a
cold harsh light we've matured? Sure some of us have world changing ideas that
would have been impossible to have as a kid, but we lose something on that road
of maturity.
So I’d like it, if you've taken the time to listen to my
ramblings, if you could post a discussion you've had with someone recently that
was bright and carefree. Nothing deep or debatable, just a light discussion
that made you think positive things.
MrKijani~
