Hey guys, this is a poem I wrote last week after I noticed a women on the streets in Davie dying of cancer. I was so horrified by her story that I decided to write a poem about it. Now that the dust has settled on it, I can say it may just be my best poem. Let me know what you think! Please tell me where I could improve; i would love to learn from this.

 

Don’t forget about me

Not when you’re laughing, not when you’re dancing

Even when you’re crying, or when you’re thrashing

When the world seems too hard and heavy for you to bear

Remember I bore it;

I bore the doorways, abuse and rape

I bore the cuts, scrapes and burns.

My body survived and shrivelled, while my brain melted away

 

Don’t forget about me

Not when the cancer eats out everything that I am:

Every blood vessel, every skin cell, every whispy strand of hair falling from my head

All except my soul;

Remember that most of all,

Shining like a light against that darkness,

Where only orange paints the pavement

And ice fills their hearts

 

Don’t turn into one of them:

Those that wear designer jeans, and shake change in front of me

Only to say “I don’t have any to spare to you”

Or, “you’re only going to use it for drugs”

While they’re all off dancing in their glitter-night clubs

And I feel their music pounding and slithering through the pavement

Travelling up into my veins, diluting my brain

I know they shoot up in the bathroom anyway

Morph into those clowns, and I hope I forget you

 

To those passing by, I am not one of the living

I am a set piece, a part of the natural environment:

My tattered old jacket is a frumpy bush, and my change bin a bottomless pit

When I talk, they ignore it the way they hear a dog barking;

Something is there, something vaguely irritating, but no,

They’re much too important to care what it might be

So my mind falls somewhere far away from it all

Watching the world walk by,

In devastation

 

As you fall upon orange sheets and a wreath of pillows,

Easing your brain, and loosening your mind,

And while you think “this bed isn’t as comfy as it could be”,

Remember that I sleep against poles, and newspapers are my blankets

 

When you see a girl convicted for a crime the whole world thought she committed

Remember that girl is me

Remember I am innocent, and you’ll see

 

When you complain about your family;

The fights with the brother— the overbearing mother— the cold father

Remember the tongues of fire injected into me by my mother

And the staff of life used to torture me by my father

Or how they kicked me out,

After I hadn’t screamed enough for them

Or the loaded shotgun—and father standing colossal and tyrannical

When I attempted to come back again

 

Remember all the pain,

The tears,

The drunkenness,

The fears

Of raising a child,

Who grew up to hate you

 

And when I die,

Remember that poverty won’t die with me

Remember that the moment I disappear, and my clothes fall around me,

Some skinny little girl, with bleach-blonde hair— crack-addled and broken,

Will take my place

When you pass her by, look into her eyes

Eyes no older than yours;

Containing none of the light blue, innocent hope and joy of yours

And be reminded of the fact that you two live in different worlds:

You—a land of learning, freedom, and God

And her, of the forgotten