Carter Billis brings us a poem, The Boy That Never Sleeps

The Boy That Never Sleeps

Carter Billis

Sometimes I need to be reassured that I'm not the only      
one in this world,
that there are more people here than I can count
on my fingers and toes.
When I'm walking down a busy street,
it feels like I could walk for miles,
anywhere my feet could bring me.
I'm boundless, ready to see everything I haven't seen,
on my way to meet everyone I couldn't elsewhere,
prepared to do all the things that I've never done.
I wasn't made to be alone.
I wasn't made to be motionless.
I was made to live freely.
I was made not to follow the crowd,
but to explore every crowd there is,
to have time, even if brief, in everyone's lives.
I want to make my way into their photographs,
into the pages of their journals,
into their kindest thought.
I want to repay the energy I'm gifted from others
until there's a never ending flow in and out of me,
enough to keep me rolling until there's
nothing left to see.




(This was for a homework idea to write about a place you'd like to go to or remember from having been there.  Carter must have been thinking of The City That Never Sleeps, right?  NYC.)


And here's the piece Carter wrote in our session October 4th in response to the prompt, quotating Galway Kinnell, "Poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment."  (So read on until the last line.)


recently I've found that poetry ...

I was born on May 29th.  This means that
I'm a gemini. 
Characteristically, gemini's are the signs
that talk the most, and even with my
shy nature, I find this to be true.
I have all of these thoughts in
my mind, and frankly I would
explode if they didn't all come
out somehow.  Usually they're
documented as text
conversations with my friends
or posts on social media, but
recently I've found that poetry,
if that's what you can call
my writing, is an effective way
of expression.  Perhaps this is
prose.  Perhaps it's just endless
banter.  But what matters is that
I'm expressing my thoughts with
as little concealment as possible.