Three Percent
Phillip Mears 1991
All my life, thinking,
seeing you day by day
week by week, month after month
for seventeen years.
You were there when I needed you,
a rock, to give me strength...
a tree, to give me life...
and a grandma to give me advise.
Three percent of a hug
is not one at all,
those were always one-hundred
and one percent.
Three percent of a sentence,
may only be a word,
and you had lots of them.
Always soft and caring.
Three percent of a tree
is only a twig, or possibly a leaf...
you were the biggest
and most beautiful tree in the forest.
The times, spent with you,
may not have been much
but those are the ones
I will remember the most.
Remember I do
as clear as the water
in the pool that is your love.
Thinking what I
should have done
instead
of what I did.
The day, I cannot,
will not forget.
That call that would,
change me forever.
How can I forget,
June 9
fifth period
Mom's phone call.
Come here after school.
Sitting on the couch
the words escaped her mouth, before
I could react.
Three percent of
a smile,
is only a grimace.
Three percent of
my love for you
is not it at all.
It is more like
one hundred and three percent.
Three percent of your heart,
using only three percent...
that is not living, that is
torture, being zapped
the rest of the time,
also torture
I know the little poem.
I think about it
everyday, every night
every second of the day.
If tears could build a ladder,
and memories a lane
I would go right up to heaven
and bring you home again.
It stirs around my mind,
like an angry bee that
is ready to sting.
June twelfth
the day
I tried to forget
never did I succeed.
Since I stepped foot,
on that bus, that day,
my soul burned
regret, guilt
sadness and woe.
The day I needed
all of my grandma
and I only had
three percent.
I should have been there,
there for you,
there for me
there for the family.
No.
Go.
Do.
Succeed.
Those words will haunt me.
For I was not there for you,
and there for me, and my closure
Now it has been,
almost four years,
four long years without you.
I sit home and cry
Knowing there is nothing,
positively nothing I can change
about that day. That day.
I wish I could
I know I should
I would, if I could.
Only if...
Only if the hands,
the hands of time
could and would reverse,
I would rectify that day
The day that not
three percent, took away,
but one hundred percent of me
was taken away.
Leaving broken and numb.
Forevermore.
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Submitted by circe_r on May 28, 2013
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:20 min read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | abxc dxxx xefg xxxa hxii dxxx djk lmxx nopj oxfex xxx Kxx Kdexg xgxxqj rxxb jxmx xxa xbos xbxxt fxxg xdhh ttdshdj xcd laxb pppx xqxb nbhbrh |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,265 |
Words | 467 |
Stanzas | 27 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 5, 3, 3, 5, 6, 4, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4, 4, 7, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6 |
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