Love of Song

[J Hillenburg]

Love of Song



Your love of song was always greater than your love of self,

and the dreams of others mattered more than your own.

You chose to remain a child despite all offers of help,

pleading all forms of misery yet insistent on being alone.

And when you went wrong, you claimed it was life instead

that had cheated and betrayed you, reducing you to this state.

Your love of song yet remained the only thought in your head

when the reality of world became too much for you to take.


There were no momentous changes, the world did not move

as often as you believed it would all those redundant nights.

You would sing to whoever would listen, hoping to prove

that you could move like vapor through all harsher lights.

What greater truth did you expect to be waiting there

as some payment or ransom for your devotion to rhyme?

Was it worth it to search incessantly for a word so fair

that it could possibly redeem you or, for a moment, stop time?


Your love of song is the only love you have ever known,

and it has guided your hands across every body, through every line.

Paying lip service to responsibility, family, and home,

dispensing your peculiar brand of mercy only when so inclined.

In these days to come will you master the raging storm

that has come to define your every dream and goal?

Your love of song has provided you a way to take form

of a man possessed, and to hide whatever scars are on your soul.