Arts & Culture, Open Mic

Open Mic: If by Anonymous

Disclaimer: This poem was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same title with a heavier Christian emphasis.

 

If

If you can keep your heart when you are broken

And know that you are the most fractured tool

If you can bear to hear the words you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools

If you can not be dead when you are tired

But, rather, be the light that you most need

If you can fight against the way you’re wired

And let the rest become at its own speed

If you can open up your hard-earned armor

When someone else has only said a word

That tells you they need something you could give them

If you can let yourself be disinterred

If you can force yourself to serve your master

When you don’t think your master’s there for you

If you can be there, loving higher, faster

If you can never speak unless it’s true

 

If you can speak your mind, and really mean it

But not as if you valued your thoughts more

If, somehow, when you have not even seen it

You are the hope that opens helpless doors

If you can empathize with random people

Who hold their cardboard signs at junctured streets

And actually do something that will help them

If you can stoop and wash your brother’s feet

If you can be yourself and still be loyal

If you can keep your anger under lock

If you can glow when you would rather boil

If you know pain and still are there to talk

If you can peacemake when your heart’s a duel

If you can feel when all you know is gone

If you can fight the thought that life is cruel

And let your grief be what you stand upon

 

If you can keep yourself from always venting

But open up your soul to the world’s wounds

If you can slowly break instead of bending

But grow back as a harmony of tunes

If you know how your friend is really feeling

And really say that they are still your friend

If you can passively continue peeling

When you don’t care about how it all ends

If you can really feel the things you think of

But still don’t really know just what you are

If you can know your mind and state its logic

But never stoop to hating others’ stars

If you can feel a tear over a lifetime

And still believe the truth shall set you free

If you don’t see your time as really your time

Then welcome to your realest destiny.

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