Devin Dion
  • Artist. Writer. Designer. Creator. About Me Art Art Writing Resume
  • "Wallflower"

    It was a nihilistic night,
    despite the beers and cheers of such colorful creatures,
    partying and parading in a magnificent masquerade,
    and still something is amiss.
    Perhaps it's my own relentless, fermented fear
    that has been brewing since I was a boy,
    bubbling up like one too many wasted years.
    This scene swims with a natural chorus of girls and boys
    while I stand in silent defiance
    shaking sporadically with nervous noise
    to the stereo who spits out hits I’ve never heard before.
    I need another drink so I can stop overthinking
    of what to say if someone should catch my eye
    in their butterfly nets.
    I smile big with the atom bomb laughter
    to make sure no one can peg me as "out of place",
    leaning back and pretending to be apart of the party
    though I'm wearing black just to blend in.
    I pose in a marble manner, steady on the surface
    while my nerves launch a firework race.

    But I can feel every stare go through me
    as the poetry daggles delicately in the dark air.
    According to eighteen people here
    I don't actually exist
    and to the others I'm either
    an enigma or an obstacle in front of the fridge.
    I figure I must've found the formula for invisibility
    when I was four
    wrapped between the blank pages of prayers unanswered
    waiting like dead skin to be peeled back and read.

    Another atom bomb and I almost forget to laugh along
    but my face doesn't glow like their lanterns,
    it doesn't flicker when my tongue tickles the air.
    It's fake and flat, pasted on plaster with painted petals.
    I'm a wallflower whose buds have not yet bloomed
    standing in an awkward angle at the corner of the room
    when you walk in.

    They call it a crush by the wait that overwhelms
    between breath and rest.

    You knock me out faster than Tyson in the title bout
    and you can see by my sizeit don't take much to topple me.
    I'm falling harder than history on New Year's Eve
    hit like a paradigm shift sucker punched me.
    You flutter around and fit right in and I can tell
    you are perfect.

    That's a powerful phrase that the uncreative say
    only because they don't understand;
    perfection is not a direction dictated by people,
    it stands like pieces in each of us.
    Yours pierces my eyes and sizes me up,
    for a second you aren't an am
    or a were
    or a will be
    only an is,
    forever free, far too beautiful for me.

    I am merely an ill-inspected irregularity,
    an assembly line escapee,
    a crumbling cobweb someone forgot to clean up.
    I imagine if I tried a dialog with you
    the deafening spaces between words would destroy me.
    I'd do something dumb like strip myself

    I'll still be there
    like the scabs of spring
    and the aftertaste of rum.

    down to the skeleton and swear
    that when they take all two hundred bonesI want to say what everybody should be screaming,
    that you are a violent roman candle eruption
    sonic booming half the light spectrum on a volcanic vista,
    the aroma of slow burning memories
    of magic markers, mistletoe, and mystery,
    the green flash on the horizon, hanging like Gatsby's hope.
    I know you have flaws, faults and failures,
    you've been abused and been a bitch
    but that doesn't alter the envy of angels,
    the fact that when you walk out that door
    everything in existence will be a little bit darker and more dull.
    I want to say I accept you
    as is
    from your sparkplug smirk
    to your gnawed nails because you are perfect

    and whether some two-faced fucker told you otherwise
    or a little boy lied to get laid
    I've seen more faces than wishes during war
    and yours is more special than sentences can speak.

    But I don't say that,
    I don't say anything.
    Instead I watch wishing
    I wasn't a thin sheet of wasted paper
    but a window where you could look out and see
    exactly how wonderful you are.

    © Devin Dion 2020