By Button Poetry
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Rudy Francisco, performing at Camp Bar in Minneapolis, MN.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:06
if you were to find an old calendar
00:08
strap it to a hospital bed tied down by
00:11
its weekends
00:13
c-section the belly of 1999 there
00:16
you’ll find a teenage version of me back
00:19
when i was a tsunami of awkward moments
00:20
splashing against the shoreline called
00:23
rochelle moss a young lady who
00:25
introduced my jaw to the floor whenever
00:27
she floated into our first period
00:29
classroom this girl
00:30
she was a dandelion seed straddling a
00:32
wish a dream i never thought would turn
00:34
flesh and grin but wire hangers like me
00:36
let’s just say
00:37
we don’t become captain of the football
00:38
team the only thing that we seem to be
00:40
good at is stopping ourselves from
00:42
saying i like you to a girl that holds
00:43
the remote control to our smiles
00:46
we are blurry silhouettes against the
00:47
backdrop of everything popular
00:49
often wearing our skin like a costume of
00:51
someone we didn’t feel comfortable
00:53
pretending to be anyways we swallow
00:54
earthquakes and then we tremble at the
00:56
smell of perfume we are bastful
00:58
we are tongue-tied we are nervous in
01:00
high definition so the question is if a
01:01
boy falls for a girl that’s out of his
01:03
league and there’s no one around to hear
01:04
him does he make a sound the answer
01:06
is hell and the first two letters of
01:07
nothing when i was a senior in high
01:09
school
01:09
i was a pocket full of chalk dust i was
01:11
elevated music on a cd that started like
01:13
a volkswagen with a really bad
01:15
transmission at this age i was a ballot
01:17
box stuffed full of everyone’s opinions
01:18
except for my own my swagger was like
01:21
watching a walkman
01:22
trying to swallow a dvd
01:27
at this age i walked as if i was
01:30
concerned with how the ground would feel
01:31
about my footsteps
01:33
and if i could just find a way to write
01:34
a letter to that boy
01:36
that old sweater with itchy sleeves that
01:38
i will someday grow out of i would say
01:40
i would say there’ll be days when you
01:41
feel like a peacock without feathers
01:43
you will feel flightless and undeserving
01:45
of attention but listen
01:46
you have to stop getting out of bed like
01:48
you’re an oil spill you’re not a flat
01:50
tire at 2am so stop
01:51
acting like an accident rudy you’re not
01:53
an accident rudy you’re an apple on a
01:56
pine tree in a room full of lemons
01:57
and you come from a long line of swiss
01:59
army pocket knives men who are small
02:01
sharp and dangerous when not handled
02:03
carefully some days
02:04
i wish that my arms were 12 years long
02:07
so i can reach all the way back there
02:08
grab you by the chest
02:09
punch you and say listen you are the
02:11
main character in a movie that i watch
02:13
every time i see the inside of my
02:14
eyelids
02:15
i told myself that i wouldn’t spoil the
02:16
ending but i will tell you this your
02:18
story starts off
02:19
really slow
02:22
but it does get better you don’t have to
02:25
believe me
02:26
someday you’ll see for yourself and when
02:28
you see rachelle moss at the senior prom
02:33
ignore the washing machine in your
02:34
stomach
02:36
tell her that she looks beautiful
02:37
tonight extends your arm like a
02:40
drawbridge to a castle no one has
02:41
visited in years
02:44
say to her
02:47
will you dance with me
02:52
she says yes thank you that’s my time
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video