Best of Monthly

Poem of the month:

I am nothing but a shell of the man I once was
So you can put me to your ear and actually hear yesteryear's ocean
I was in shape then
A much better built body of water with infinite waves and fathomless depths
Where you could have deep sea fishing for compliments
And caught plentiful schools of reassuring comments
Now all you get is the boot
You fell for the bait and got hooked on what you thought I was
Now we're both struggling to win this tug of war of the worlds
Where we breathe the same air, it's just done differently
And I'm tryin to figure out ways to have comfortably survive outside your element
Compromising intelligence
I dabbled in watered down thoughts that filtered in from the main stream
I'm offering mind altering ideas that make the most quiet natured brain scream
from exposure to the types of things that won't necessarily make you happier
They'll just give you a greater range of emotions
And I can feel myself getting lured into deeper oceans of ??
Where people think they're as safe as cartoons simply because they speak in bubbles
A sanitized safe-haven where you could face Satan and have his faith straightened
His new goal would be to dethrone Poseidon and have Neptune's place taken
They'd swashbuckle with their pitchforks
While Lucifer shit talks and rips forts of coral reef
For relief they be like "bitch walk"
From this oversized aquarium that daddy kept cleanly to unhealthy degrees
Writing suicide notes with invisible ink on transparences
And posting them to the glass boundaries that surround the seas of change
Strangely enough, while bringing back the real
I could sense intense resistance so I had no other choice but to cut the line
I'm not saying you're overly naive
I just think you should get into the habit of seeing when strings are attached
Fortunate for you I'm compassionate enough to throw back what I catch
If it's underdeveloped and needs time to grow
Though I'm remorseful of the pain I've caused you
And I want to kiss your lips better
I sympathize with the sorrow by stroking the scar
of my own traumatic experience with my excommunicated tongue
Say I know exactly what you mean when you say it hurts too much to talk
I've been there; I don't plan on returning cause
No matter how much distance I kept or how long I waited for my wounds to heal
They'd re-open with the slightest flashback
So I sued time for malpractice
That bastard's a hack with a rusty scalpel and barbed-wire stitch thread
Instead of seeing things clearly, they're pitched red
And there's this glitch in my head that's got me thinking contradictions, it said:
"There are more fish in the sea
Whether you hear me not or you listen to me
Whether you listen to me or hear me not
There are more microorganisms in my teardrop"
But fear not, I'd never sink as low as to make my ears pop
And I imagine now you only want to swim with members of your own league
And you don't need me meddling, sending sonar signals
High pitched notes are symbols, my voice has grown far
But ripples are only caused when you cast stones
But you shouldn't throw rocks if you live in fragile fairytales
--sage francis