The Optic Nerve

A poem about a friend

The sunshine falls on your shoulders
And you carry it from class to class
To home to sleep
Nesting it in your retina
The weight of the warmth
You never fall onto the ground
Despite the heavy reality
The one fact
Life is ugly

A grotesque place
With hate bleeding from the gums
Spitting onto your face
Even those
"Friends"
With a new and innovative way to hurt
Stabbing you in front
It's much more effective

You laugh at the rain
And dance in the thunder
Commanding the lighting
To come and find you
It hits you every time in the heart
Pumping more and more love
To just the right spot

For every negative thought in this world
You emit a thousand
More positive ones
And I swear, one of these days
This world will be drowning in the happiness
You give out
And not one person will complain
From getting drenched

The road ahead
Is still a blueprint
Waiting to be edited
And re-edited
Till its so marked up
There's no plan at all
 
And then you'll follow the path
Waiting to be paved
For the tax dollars to be spent
Another forest to tear down
A dream to build up

You've got a head full of light
Shining through your eyes
A camera that has a fast shutter speed
And keep on taking those beautiful pictures
You call your life

A face with two meanings
For you to grow on
One day you'll see
Both sides are all kinds of beautiful
All sides are a role model

Today is real
Tangible
With the tangos, and the tangerines
Today is
A living and breathing being
With the branches stretched up to the sky
Your arms joining in
As one

Author's Note

Any critique? Specific lines you dont like?

Reviews

[Caleb Benton]

I thought it was very good. I especially liked the last stanza

[Tony Woods]

I really liked this, I think it's almost as if you're whispering it into my ear or something (I hope that doesn't sound too creepy, well, it does actually, but please don't read into it too much), anyway to paraphrase I think I could see this being narrarated by a soft female voice over a movie or something, like in Cold Mountain. I really liked these two verses:
"And then you'll follow the path
Waiting to be paved
For the tax dollars to be spent
Another forest to tear down
A dream to build up

You've got a head full of light
Shining through your eyes
A camera that has a fast shutter speed
And keep on taking those beautiful pictures
You call your life"

The last two lines are very good, I especially like the camera metaphor, but I'm not real sure where you're going with the tax dollars and the forest being torn down. I hope I'm not missing something really important, but either way it flows with the poem and it forces my mind to race, which I really dig. I'm not really a poetry expert, so I don't feel too comfortable giving any tips, but then again I can't really think of anything wrong with this anyway, so well done.

[AG]

"You laugh at the rain
And dance in the thunder
Commanding the lighting
To come and find you"

these are very moving and i like how the poem in general gives me mixed impressions of calm and pathos at the same time. the symbolism is well suggested and your lines are very well-constructed!

very good job! this had been a certainly enjoyable read!