Spoken Word, Topic 1: Suicide

This is a poem I wrote last month after I found out that my friend Jesse committed suicide.  We grew up together - he was my classmate and my neighbor.  My friends and I had a hard time coming to terms with his death - it's still hard for us to believe it..  he was the class clown!  He was such a fun person to be with.  He was always smiling!  But he dealt privately with bipolar disease.  Of course, I wish I had been a better friend.  But I learned a lot about God's grace, and I believe he's found peace and happiness in heaven.

The intro for this poem was inspired by this one time when I caught him sneaking around in my rock garden.  I was scared because I thought there was a burglar, but it was Jesse-- picking a flower for his sister from my dad's puakenekene tree.  I think we must have been freshmen in high school at the time.

THE SUN STILL RISES FOR YOU

Jesse, you used to walk

through the midday steam exhaled

by the street that still speaks

praises for the morning rain,

just to pick a flower from my father's garden.

You still carry that puakenekene in your hand

as you walk through the midday steam exhaled

by the street that still speaks

prayers for our mourning tears,

searching for a way back to my Father's garden,

your Father's garden.

Your garden,

my garden.

Your life,

my life.

Your life is my life.

You live in me.

I, who used to roam this earth

with closed eyes,

as if I was not part of it,

as if it was not part of me.

I almost believed I could be free

from everything I couldn't see - 

free to escape from it,

free to escape from me.

Once, I even rode that elevator,

just to get high from being up there,

on a rooftop forty stories

above the concrete canopy.

When I was up there,

standing on a platform 

halfway between life and death,

removed from everyone but me,

I got too close to the edge - 

and I tripped on my own gravity.

I pummeled down in rapid acceleration,

blazed through the night sky,

and cast invisible shadows over the eyes of stargazers.

As I fell I heard them wishing upon me

for love and happiness.

But they were light years too late,

I had already slammed hard

into the sidewalk of their society.

When I died I learned what it meant to live:

I saw the miracle in the minerals

taken from every heavenly body

that combined in a cosmic explosion

to form starry-eyed people like me.

I realized that I loved

that tough umbilical cord

that tethered my unaborted soul

to the burning core

within the womb of my mother,

the lifeline that pumped her blood

into the nucleus

of every syllable I uttered.

I was the child of that summer day

when mother blushed in the naked light

of a husband who licked 

with his flaming tongue

the seven climate zones of life.

I thank God that each morning

I was reborn

as the child of earth and sun.

I thank God that I was the child of love.

Passionate love

that made the earth turn,

made the sun burn.

I declare,

I am the child of love.

I am love.

I love.

No longer will I have to roam the roads

on the map etched in blood on my right forearm.

No longer will I have to get high

only to fall

like a star already dead.

By His grace,

the sun still rises for me,

still rises for you.

Jesse, the sun still rises for you.

It wipes away the teardrops

that glisten on your mother's cheeks like dew

while she picks flowers for you

as you rest in your Father's garden,

my Father's garden,

our Father's garden,

where love lives forever.