The World's Not Waiting Poem by Lora Cooley

There is a loneliness in this world
So great I can see it in every tick of every clock
People are so tired
Either by love or no love
We are afraid
The schools told us we were winners
They never taught about the gutters and the failures
Or the people afraid, alone, and unfilled
But the city fills
The junkyards fill
The graveyards fill
But nothing else fills
Nothing else fills
We move by instinct
It was out on the road with a thumb hanging out
It was seeing the first morning's light
It was space and faces spilling over with love
It was tracing the chest to the arm to the hand
It was fears of foreclosure
Stocks in general motors
Boarding up buildings when there's rent that hasn't been paid in three months
But still we have hope left
It's when you lose a job and welfares not waiting
Looking at bills unpaid and knowing the prices are climbing
It's paying for school and food and home and enough things to call your own with a credit card maxed out and earning next to nothing at your job leaving you trying to claw your way out of debt
It's the troubles in life and the things that make days seem so long
But it's perfectly okay
I'm afraid too
And you say that I will never know the difference between feeling and sound
But for ears that can't listen the feeling resounds
Paying such close attention to these stranger, boys and girls
We all call out into the sky
"We'll change the world"
And if we were beaten by the winter
If we got strangled by regret
Let our love of life lift the tension for the summer can't warm us yet
They say we can't spot the differences between a feeling and a sound
But they could never learn that its not petty imperfections that set us apart
It's the way we hold our heads
It's the way I hold out my heart
But the world's not waiting on all our hopes and our dreams
There are ghosts in these walls crawling in through your head and out through your ear
Taking all our passions and riping them at the seams
But let me rebuild all the things they have shattered
All the things you have let no longer matter
I will bury the wreckage of every passions' decline
Let you fall asleep while I lean in to kiss your guilt goodnight
You could blame it on your hands
Or you could blame it on your body for your fingers snared in my veins
I think its time you pulled them out
And I don't care about the flesh it will tear
It isn't the flesh that im worried about
I wasnt ever close to perfect
But today I'm not worried about failure
The past is a flower, the future, the snow
I'm worried about the distance
The ghost of its presence compressing my chest, and holding it like a vine
Like all of my insides crawled out to head west
But it didnt hurt this time
There was no sharp pain
There are fires
They run through the valleys making dust of the grass
But you should know that nothing lasts
The worlds not waiting for empty promises and empty fears
We are not our failures.
We are love
The worlds not waiting, and I'm only flesh and bone
The worlds not waiting for better or for worse
The worlds not waiting, we are