Blueprint - Shane Koyczan

In times of unimaginable grief people will offer you their sympathies.

And I appreciate the outstretched arm,

but I’ve been in a breaking things kinda mood.

I’ve been scarfing down on the food for thoughts and I’ve got bowels are

backed-up with brilliant ideas that eventually I am gonna shit books.

I’m gonna shit books are bad ass they’ll be banned for defining trying to

bravery as walking into a biker bar wearing a pink sweat shirt with a picture

of a unicorn being tamed by gnome.

Going at alone is like leaping out of a window waiting for god to catch you.

And in the second before impact gravity becomes a fact so well established it

makes you calm.

I’ve gone from needing a shoulder to lean on to trying to calm the night into

thinking that had the day shift.

I’ve turned my shadow to shoplift light from the back pocket of levity,

bend my forehead to the kiss of brevity hoping I could get through depression

with some semblance of speed.

But the life of camera feed is under 24 hour delay, so I keep reliving the

worst parts of yesterday in slow motion.

And someone once told me that the finer points of devotion are about the size

of a pin hole.

But there’s millions of 'em, and if you can connect each dot then you’ve got a

diagram of what you think you thought you knew.

And if you are willing to admit you know nothing, you’ve got a blueprint for a

breakthrough.

I’m just trying to get by.

Huffing the glue that is supposed to keep me together in a world that global

warming lets get this bad then bitches about the weather.

A world where jailbirds misdemeanor of a feather flock to the back alley in an

attempt to stage their own private protest rally, because it still seems that

capitalism is a convenience store open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and if

you’re not coming to buy something they will not let you in to take a leak.

But, I want to live in a world where 76 year olds hang out in nightclubs,

because they still have not hit their peak.

I want a week spent in silence so the next time we speak others will be ready

to hear what we have to say and the following day will be comprised not so much

of moments of silence, but 24 hours of noise.

Noise for the toys that we as children never wanted to let go, because we live

in a world that told us to grow up as we grew,

growing up to know we knew noise is not enough, because our fathers are dying.

We were left trying to make sense out of a world that does not, because

everything that was supposed to be was not, because what was not was never what

we wished for.

We grew up waging war against birthday candles,

wishing our hearts would become handles for every time that we needed to get a

grip.

I make noise for a man who gave 20 years of his life to a gold mine and two

years before retirement was rewarded with a pink slip.

Let us serve each chip on the shoulder of the tired and the poor,

to the billionaires who are convinced that in owning everything,

they still need more.

This is for the bars bathroom floor.

For the men and women who live there,

because it’s easier to care about where your next drink comes from,

then it is to go home to no one.

Make noise for the son or daughter that lives inside you.

Maybe someday we’ll understand what our parents went through.

Make noise for everything you think you thought you knew as if knowing it was

tough enough off the hard times;

noise for the mimes that will not, for the people that do not, for the children

that can not.

Make noise because the Land of Oz is crumbling and the Tin Man needs a heart

transplant.

This is for each senseless rant that will one day make sense.

Let us put dents in the armor of those who said they could not be reached.

This is for the beached whales beaching themselves because maybe love and

loneliness are not just human conditions.

Yell for the hopeless missions and hopeless wars fought by men hopeful.

Scream for the times' that was now and this was then.

There will be times when noise is not enough and you must stand.

So stand.

As if you believe standing for the beliefs you believe in are worth standing

for.

As if every closed door is begging to be opened up and every beggar’s cup is

filled with the spare change needed to change the minds of those who’d have us

think love is the missing link that we somewhere along the way misplaced.

Our lifelines are traced by hands not yet old enough to hold pencils,

and there are no stencils for any alphabet that can be arranged to explain or

articulate how we feel,

because we feel so much more than we could ever voice,

because every choice we makes takes us further from our fathers.

And the disposition of long distance never bothers to explain that '

I miss you' means before and above all others.

Miss you like we miss the grandmothers with Alzheimer’s whose lives resemble

the missing punch line to one liners.

So wait.

And when she finally looks at you, as if she was looking for you,

stand and make noise just so she knows that you were looking too.

Tell her, «Thank God I found you.»

Because know it or not, you were part of her blueprint.

She had blood like a flint that sparked you father or mother in this flame and

you,

like they must burn whether you like it or not, but you were given gifts.

You’ve got windpipes that house hurricanes, floods veins that pump.

I’m not the first one to say it, «Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a flying: And this same flower that smiles today.

Tomorrow will be dying.

«Every new birthday candle you blow out time is only trying to tell you

that every breakthrough you make will only take you closer to the day that your

parents must pay the ferry man for a ride to the other side of the river and

you will one day be on your own.

But you carry with you a blueprint, a hint that your history will always be

with you,

that you were your parents' breakthrough.

Your blood will be the crazy glue that keeps you together on the eventual day

when you must stand alone.

They stand and make mountains jealous of how much you’ve grown.