Sit down, old friend

I know what you're going to say before you say it.
You may be right this time as you have been before.
I don't want to listen to you, though.

Then a weird thing happens:
I split into two sides of myself and start giving myself advice.
It's often easier to give advice than follow it
Or so I try to tell myself.

He sits me down, myself does,
"Sit down," he says...
"You might not be ready to hear this," he begins,
"But you're going about it all wrong."

I give him a frowning look like he doesn't know what he's talking about.
"Don't look at me like that," he says.
"You've got to give this up, son. It's just not good.
All this poetry you're writing, all these thoughts you're having, all this time you're spending
And what's going to happen of it. Give it up."

Son? But you're the same age as me, I tell him.
"No, not really. I'm smarter so I figure that makes me older.
I'm your sensible side it seems and someone needs to talk some sense into you.
These thoughts you're having, trying to be hopeful, trying to see the positive.
Some times you do just have to accept that the world's not all candy and summer storms."

Well, I don't really like candy all that much, but I don't see your point, I say.
"Look you're not getting the point: All these optimistic thoughts you have, they're just not healthy. It's just not going to happen the way you imagine. I know. Trust me, I know."
I give him an odd look: Are you from the future? I venture to ask.

"No, no, no, you idiot. Not really. But trust me, I know. You'll be better if you just accept reality."
He grabs some pages and roughly taps them on his other hand.
"Look at this: It's just bad, really. What were you thinking?
Fire and burning and plays, computer programs that no one wants to read about."

Well, I was going to rewrite some of it, yes. The story, though, not the poetry.
I think it might be romantic if it was books and not a computer, yes?
"Romantic," he scoffs. "You and your romance. You make me sick."
I stand up at this.

Now listen here, I start, my romance that you make so much fun of has got me where I am in life.
You know I used to be like you, cynical and hopeless, thinking the worst,
And sometimes I still am, but I don't want to be like that all the time.
Being insecure doesn't feel too good, even though I am sometimes.

"You're insecure all the time," he says laughing. "You think I'm not in there with you, chum?
You second guess everything and think the worst as your first choice of possibility."
I'm silent at that and try to come up with a response.
Yeah, maybe that's my natural tendency, but I compensate with this optimism and romance that you seem to think is so useless.

Yes, I'm insecure, but I control my thoughts, buster.
I decide if I want to let something bother me, I decide to see the glass half full, and I decide when I'm going to give up on something, got it?

"Yeah, yeah," he says, "Don't get bent outta shape about it. Man, you worked yourself up. See, there is anger in you."
He had me at that, but I knew I was right, too.

I took the pages from his hand.
I can fix it, I said. I can make it better.

"Maybe you can, kid. Maybe you can."

I knew you were right in a way, and that he was trying to help just like you were, but I couldn't do the things I was being advised to.
I wanted to burn a little longer.
Or a lot longer, really.
I don't know why I keep choosing that metaphor, or word or whatever, but it seems right.
That month of poems seems like a blur and I was honest in a way that I hadn't been in a while.
Poetry is a way to write exactly what you're feeling without coming out and saying it.

I burn=I can't stop thinking about you.
You're a star=I like you
You think this poem is about you=This poem is about you.

There are times when all a poet really wishes he could do is give the poem he wrote to the person he wrote it about and let her read it.

There are other times he wants to lock them up in a casket and let them collect dust for a few decades.

But you see, this poem really isn't about you, and though I burn from the star that got a little too close
I think perhaps I'll remain a hopeless romantic 'til my dying day.
"Dawn died a tiny thousand deaths for you and she's till alive
So the least you can do is keep going.
Things only have the power you give them: a broken sword or a broken heart..."