To date, I consider this my best work. Tell me what you think. Identity Crisis When the world becomes heavy and man is left standing on the banks of a levy Protect yourself for the barriers are bound to break and the earth is liable to quake You see your life in a different light once it's at stake But more than your life is at stake when it comes to matters of the heart You jeopardize your soul, your inspiration, your art Nothing matters more to me than these life mysteries All I have is my inspiration and meaning Sometimes my heart is so full that my soul starts teeming with my unreal dreaming That is when my poetic fluidity starts streaming It overflows the levy and man is submerged into my pervious words of things unheard Man drowns into a new existence where success is found through the persistence of spiritual omnipotence This rushing stream holds no bounds and emits new colors and sounds not found on the solidity of our mortal grounds Try as I might I spend each night raining down to restore this stream Something so immense sucked it dry while it sat content Something hell bent on making life's riches become spent And I've become so spent that I can't even pay my soul's rent So my soul has left me here to fend for myself for an entire year This year will be the longest I've had the displeasure of being here How can I have a life without the one thing I need I must now find a new way in order to feel I need something or someone who can wake me up and show me that I'm real Because right now I'm real Real lonely And the only thing I can do is start atoning I can profess that I haven't tried my best And I can profess that I have some clout bearing down upon my chest And I have some thoughts so wicked and sometimes I let them manifest I am not perfect, but nor am I a Human Being I'm the creation of something that Human's are no longer seeing I'm a byproduct of Nature's design that gets stuck in a rut when my soul is fleeing Someone once said that love is just a game This game can be played more than once with opponents of different names But with the end of each game the outcome is always the same No one ever wins and in fact both lose The hard part is that it is something we cannot choose And eventually we bruise and the scars of our anguish ensues This game has no pauses, start over's, or redo's The only way to cope is to sing the blues And the blues only brews more heartache and pain But from playing the game something is gained A knowledge that there is more to life than apathy and the ignorance of always being happy It shows us that because there is yin there must be a yang So I'll wear my pain and frustration on my shoulder I'll even struggle with my demons on my back as they crush me like a boulder Because as I get older I get wiser I learn things from strife that are important for life I've learned to carry peace instead of a piece And if I die then at least my integrity never ceased Because you are the only one who can determine if you've won A poor man can beat a rich man if he only cherishes the things he's done Money and the superficial are only artificial in this world Worshipping your money stacks won't bring a dead friend back If you use the superficial to cope than you have no hope for atoning your heart And you'll die a sorry sap who spent his life looking for the X on the treasure map Because the only treasure is the one not noticeable to the naked eye It's the third eye that can see a person's true emotions and inner-commotion So don't become third eye blind by shiny bling and the twinkle of a diamond ring You must learn to savor the flavor of Love's neighbor The poetic soul must be simmering in you like a hot coal You must search deep within yourself to discover where it is you have the biggest hole You must fill that hole with compassion, however deep it may be Then next you must stand at the edge of the levy and part it like Moses parted the Red Sea Take a walk on the ground that is wet with your desires As you walk on this ground which has become surrounded by your soul's discrepancies Sit down in the middle and hold your breath Release your hold on the mountainous walls of all things new and old Let the waves crash down and toss you around until your whole body starts to pound Let it swirl you and become unwound at the sound of the waves of your soul transforming your fragments into a whole Twist and bend in the undertow as the full moon appears in the sky Wash up to shore from the pull of the tide and the tugging of your spiritual guide Open your eyes wide and see the world anew Now that you're whole, your soul will show you what you must do It will take you on a hike through the world you see growing before you This hike will never end as long as you don't pretend and cover up the feelings inside you Because no matter what you do, your soul will stay true It will stand beside you if you need something to confide in It will make your blues grow shoes and dance along the peak of the sunset It will shake your skeleton and cure your blindness of the things you wished to forget Because to forget is to deny our past which denies our existence And a wise man never forgets He just sits and thinks until he reaches the brink of understanding He inherits a clarity which can be considered a rarity amongst most Since he didn't deny his past he will learn and last through the tests of time Unnerved and unshaken he gains a knowledge that can never be taken This is the knowledge of growth And I pledge an oath to uphold the knowledge of growth in which I have uncovered And I will live a full life free of haziness and try to discover more Because once you reach a point where you think you've figured it out A cloud of doubt will reign bolts of confusion And what you thought was real is actually an illusion But don't confuse it for delusion Sometimes we can't see what's right in front of us And sometimes we spit rhymes and write lines that hold no meaning to us For me, I must have meaning to my lines If I create a new poem every 6 months consider it a good sign Because my life isn't always full of inspiration and eloquent words Sometimes I numb myself with substances that some have never even heard Sometimes I lie in my bed at night and wonder if I'll ever get my life right Or if I'll just meet my demise when I reach the height of something bright Sometimes my pen seems to flow words that I don't even know Words so vibrant and articulate that I wonder if I have a split being If sometimes I come right out of me and become someone who is more intelligent Someone who persists in academics and refuses to quit I wonder if all of this is the product of me awakening that split being If everything I see he is seeing If everything I write comes from his restlessness at night If all that I write is a projection from his interjection in my life Because sometimes even my own writing scares me Everything seems to have a flow that I didn't know until I realized I know The only explanation is that my soul was possessed by a poetic spirit who couldn't find its place of rest So it found me after hearing my cries of wanting to die I felt like my life was void of purpose I felt like anything I did was seemingly worthless Because in the end we all die anyways and everything we accomplished won't mean a thing But now I know that you reap what you sow And I'm reaping a conscious mind that looks introverted at my existence and concepts of space and time I'm no longer the pessimistic type who views life as a bunch of hype It's hard to hype something everyone possesses But it's easy to blame when you're trapped in its messes Life will continuously screw you over again and again But I know life is a gift one must relish in Doing anything to survive is the way it has always been After all, aren't you all just Human? I always feel tired and depressed after writing a poem with such longevity It's because I've emptied the stream of my soul and let it pour poetically And now I must wait again for the stream to overflow and break the levy So I can spill out more of what I know from my urge to continuously grow And I'll keep growing forever.
Wow, that was....long. Sorry I didn't read it all, poetry isn't my bag, but I respect those who do enjoy it. What kind of prize did you win?
When I say "Prize Poem," I actually mean it figuratively rather than literally, haha. To me, it is my prize poem. I actually haven't entered it into anything, on lack of not knowing where to enter it. *Oh, and thanks for atleast attempting to read it! Especially for someone who doesn't normally like to read poetry, haha.