The following are two poems
that I originally wrote for a literary magazine published at my high school.
ONE-WAY STREET
I walk across these hallowed halls
Go past the classrooms and bare walls
I see my friends each school day
But the street, the street, still goes one way
I talk to them, they talk to me
I like them but I still can’t see
Sometimes I can speak, other times I can’t say
Thus the street, the street, still goes one way
What I cannot say I can still write
At the end of the sentence is where I fight
Can I write how I feel? Maybe I may
As the street, the street,
goes down one way
As long as the workweek’s typically spent
And as often as my parents pay rent
The struggles will come and go away
As the street, the street,
still travels one way
Sometimes I lose, sometimes I win
With the lumps and cuts I take to fit in
Yes that’s sometimes the price the I
pay
As I walk the street that goes one way
Sometimes I don’t feel or understand
The reason and rhyme for the rules at hand
My tone did change one year in May
While the street, the street, still remained one way
Yet I still struggle with a sensation I feel
Though the mandate I’m given is still very real
With the figure that’s shaped so it won’t go astray
As the street, the street,
still stays one way
The tone of which I was scared to break
Yet change it did, new views it did make
And the mess at night that’s still here to stay
Was silent as the street still went one way
But I no longer care about the street’s path
It’s still worth the joy and the aftermath
As my friends often keep my frustration at bay
Let the street, that street, remain one way
MUSIC MY FRIEND
I sit in my room with the music I play
The songs that I hear by ear each day
I’m comforted each day by the music I hear
By the songs that I play and learn through the ear
I’m disabled, they said, at the day of my birth
That’s how it would be since my first day on Earth
I now know what they meant as I walk through the halls
Of this high school now with its classrooms and walls
It’s my lunch they’ve assigned in the cafeteria now
I walk in not knowing while others know how
I can hear what is said off the tip of the tongue
But I can’t read the eyes on the fact what is done
And I walk in not knowing if I’ll be welcome
And if this is the day I’ll be told not to come
And I walk in each day like a gambler to bet
If the day of rejection is to come yet
And sometimes I’m told I am such a good friend
Yet I still cannot know if this day is the end
And they all seem to know and expect to be welcome
Yet I never know if I can sit down and come
For they were right about my disability
And I might never know who’s a friend to me
For I can only know if the words are spoken
Not by eyes or nose or by temperament’s token
Or I might be selfish, can I truly expect
For the words to be said when they think I’m upset
We are told to be honest but to be polite
And to sometimes hide the truth that may be right
To speak of the tongue they say is crude
To show of the eyes and the mouth is less rude
Yet even though I may not know who is my friend
My music that I play shall stay until the end
And that is why I stay on my bed
And play the music from within my head
For though I am disabled and cannot always know
My music is the friend I will always show