All we give
The presence of life itself surrounds us all, if not embrace.
And with that, comes the art made by millions.
Because art is simple, art is everything that is beautiful,
and everything that is ugly, plain and in all simplicity, undeniable.
Art fills its words within the hands of people, within eyelashes.
It gives us not only hope, but the devastating whip of what hits us.
And I sit, in a dark-lit room,
My friends have pipes in their hands,
they’re all smoking a plant called dance,
and as this smoke twirls and sings,
as this smoke makes us all grin,
I can only seek, look, as It holds my music.
My sax has the pleasure of my feeling fingers,
and as I play the melody,
the song called life,
the smoke can only put up a play.
it shows devastation, it shows happiness,
the smoke shows us the hills of old memories.
The grown men Infront of me cry,
and I can only feel nothing, yet everything.
The smoke makes us choke, and yet it doesn’t go out,
the pipes keep burning, and we can only inhale,
as it drifts slowly around us, if not completely within us.
Because in all truth, the smoke is what makes us.
We are art itself.
We carry the names full of history,
we carry the name of people who have fought for us,
For us, and art.
And even if we cannot explore, and seek as they did.
Even if we can't deny the fact that we’re old,
old and unaccomplished,
even if we never smiled as much as we could’ve,
We do it now.
and we do it, in hope of healing.
But what can you do,
When those years are over,
and all you’ve done is survive?
What can you do,
When the years of youth have destroyed us,
and all we’ve done is look?
In all truth,
we are merely people,
and people, if not art, are alone.
Because the simplicity of passion is all too hard to look at,
and despite passion surrounding us all, you could never fully see it.
We rummage in our sleep,
We weep in silence and mourn,
because our passions have left us,
We’ve left it unkept, unused and abused.
We are nothing but an enemy to art, as well as the peak of it.
Even the trees around us, the grass and the clouds look at us in silence,
because we are unbelievable.
We are the people who hold ourselves back,
and maybe that’s why we are art.
Because despite everything that we’ve done to ourselves,
our tears are just as beautiful as our voices,
and in all truth, tragedies speak more sense than anything else.
So, despite the fact that the world never got to see you excel,
Despite the fact that you’ve wasted yourself away,
you’re still made up off of something so deeply desirable.
And that, is feeling.
Because we are powered off of feeling.
And as we see other people create dreams and goals and lives.
We can only stare in awe,
in awe and in fear and in jealously.
In the end, they can only fall down with you,
and you can only stare harder, because the beauty of that is indubitable.
And it’s God who knows,
If it's worse for the people who do it to themselves.
God knows,
if its worse for the people who simply couldn’t.
Because your friend killed himself for it,
in every single way a man could kill himself.
He stripped himself off of talent,
he looked in the mirror and saw an extraordinary man,
with so much to give,
with so much to live,
and with so much to love.
And yet, the curse of restrainment had failed him,
he wrote, and he danced with the smoke,
and he was ought to be a remarkable individual.
And even as his passion burnt with love, and anything that came with it
Even though, he could do nothing but hold thrill itself in his fingertips,
Even though, he loved life,
the thought of not being able to produce art, had killed him,
It’s numbed him,
it simply drove him to a certain insanity.
Because he himself, could not repress it, like many of us.
And he, like many of us, was a young man who believed life was a masterpiece.
If he couldn’t add onto it, than who was he?
And even so, the fact that he, in the end, had added onto it,
could only make everything all the worse.
His friends filled their mouths with snow,
they yelled and commented on scenery,
they laughed to avoid crying,
they’d weep instead of thinking about it.
And yet all at the same time,
they did it to themselves.
About this poem
This poem is about looking at life from the sidelines, not being able to contribute the art you want too and hating yourself for it as you watch other people unfold into the same unhappiness.
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Written on November 05, 2022
Submitted by maya.dubiel on November 05, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 4:30 min read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXAAXB XXXXXXXCDEBXXF XXB BGCBHXXCDXFIXJIBX XAXXKXXBXKXAXHLXXXEAFFXXCIA MLMCKGXXXJXNXAKXDNNCBXCKX XCFKXL |
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Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,207 |
Words | 899 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 14, 3, 17, 27, 25, 6 |
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"All we give" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/145512/all-we-give>.
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