Poetry || Rudy Francisco

This poem does the exact same thing to me everytime I read it! Everytime!
It starts off not too slow but I always reach my climax near the mid section (I highlighted these parts)
Its a poem that touches an important problem most youths face : low self esteem, not feeling good enough etc
Its particularly nostalgic because most of my high school days were spent feeling not good enough as well, undeserving of attention.
It took a while to grow out of that phase and I blogged about that here.

Its 4:47am and my brain probably needs to rest but I just had to share this.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and it touches a spot in your heart too.
Remember, You are good enough always!

Rudy Francisco – 17.

If you were to find an old calendar, strap it to a hospital bed
Tie it down by its week-ends, and then C-section the belly of 1999
You’d find the 17 year old version of me
Back when I was a tsunami of awkward
moments
Splashing against the shoreline called
__________.
A young lady, who introduced my jaw to the floor whenever she floated into our first period classroom.

This girl, she was a dandelion seed straddling a wish, a dream i never thought would turn flesh and green, but wire hangers like me
We don’t become captain of the football team because the only thing that we are good at is stopping ourselves from saying ‘I like you’ to a girl that holds the remote control to our smiles so we are just blurry silhouettes against the backdrop of everything popular often wearing our skin like a costume of someone we didn’t feel, comfortable pretending to be anyway.
We swallow earthquakes, and then shrivel at the smell of perfume
We got bashful, we got tongue tied
And we got nervous in high definition
So the question is, if a boy falls for a girl that’s out of his league and there’s no one around to hear him.
Does he make a sound?
The answer…the answer is ‘hell’ and the first two letters of ‘nothing’

When I was a senior in high school, I was a pocket full of chalk dust.
I was elevator music on a CD that stuttered like a volkswagen with a really bad transmission.
At this age, I was a ballot box stuffed full of everyone’s opinions except for my own.
My swagger was like watching a walkman trying to swallow a DVD.
At this age, my mouth was a door with hinges covered in rust and I walked as if I was concerned with how the ground would feel about my footsteps
And if I could just find a way to write a letter to that boy who was in an old sweater with itchy sleeves that I will someday grow out of.
I would say, I would say there will be days when you feel like a peacock with no feathers.
Like you are flightless, and undeserving of attention.
But listen, you have to stop getting out of bed like an oil spill.
You’re not a flat tire at 2 am, so stop acting like an accident.
You’re not an accident, you’re not a fucking accident Rudy!
You’re an apple on a pine tree in a room full of lemons
And you come from a long line,
And you come from a long line of Swiss army pocket knives
Men who are small, sharp, and dangerous when not handled carefully
Some days I wish that my arms were 12 years long so I could reach all the way back there and grab you by the shoulders, shake you, and say
Listen… you are the main character in a movie that I watch
Every time I see the inside of my eyelids
I told myself a million times that I wouldn’t spoil the ending
But I will tell you this, your story starts off really slow…
But it does get better, and you don’t have to believe me
Someday you’ll see for yourself
And when you see _________ at the senior prom, ignore the washing machine in your stomach.
Tell her she looks beautiful tonight, Extend your arm like a drawbridge to a castle
That no one has visited in years, and say
‘Will you dance with me?

You can find more of my awesome poetry finds here

Cassandra Ikegbune

Xoxo

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