Sunday Poem: The Spinning World by Lacey Roop

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Lacey Roop is a well-known slam poet in Austin, Texas. Read more of her poetry here.

The Spinning World

Lacey Roop

And some have this habit of looking out of windows and calling it impossible.
They look forward to sleeping so they can escape these feelings
hug pillows tight and dream of
letting go

If I could paint a picture of all I could never hold in my hands
I’d name it possible and jump from this earth
I’d somersault with the wind
put the dirt in my pockets and sail to the Arctic to show the Eskimos
that you can build castles out of anything

people need hope

every non-believer believes in something
so doctor explain to me sunset because I know you felt it as a boy
Mathematician, does your heart unwind at the spine
of certain books like problem you can’t solve?

We consist of science and things that can’t be explained by it
the world is not a foreign place
we are foreign to it

it spins and spins and spins at 1,038 miles per hour on its orbit and
another 67,000 miles per hour more around the sun

while the average American will spend nearly 15 years of their life
waiting in line at grocery stores or traffic jams or on

phone calls of people who will never love you as much
as you have fallen in love with the idea that they might.

We wait…

Wishing for our chance to jump because so many of us
have responsibility tied to our ankles
we clipped our wings years ago
buried the pages of fables
put away our crayons the moment we got our driver’s license

blocked out our imaginations with our BIG words and plans for the future
but the future is just an excuse for you not to do incredible things with your life
right now

the minutes are ticking; moments build up on themselves
windows are here for you to know that other places exist on the otherside of them

open the door
break the glass

sleep on your roof tonight so you can slumber to the heartbeat of the stars
that beat because someone, somewhere is on the other side of them wishing

you don’t have to wait until tomorrow to go to the edge of the earth
you don’t have to wait until you are in your bed dreaming
before you wake up and
let go.

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