They told me I was wasting time
\nWhen I could just beg for change
\nWhile I sat at the computer
\nWriting poems for a page
\nThat had yet to exist, you see
\nI’d not yet found the strength
\nTo give my writing to the world
\nI’d not yet found my wings
\nBut I knew that day would come
\nAnd I knew the time would go
\nAnd I knew my way with words
\nWould help me find a home
\nI’d been living on the streets
\nFor two years by that time
\nAnd for every heartache I found a way
\nTo make another rhyme
\nWhile they were out there changing nothing
\nAbout the way they lived their lives
\nI was sitting in a library
\nWriting words about the whys
\nBuilding something for my future
\nFor the future of my son
\nDetermined to escape all that
\nI let my ink just run
\nWhile they were laughing at me
\nAnd calling me a fool
\nI turned the pain to poetry
\nAnd made my pen a tool
\nNow look at me, a decade later
\nWith two books that bear my name
\nAnd a following I’d not imagined
\nWhen they were calling me insane
\nI’ve made every dream I had come true
\nAnd some I’d dared not dream
\nIn those days of darkest nights
\nWhen I had not one thing
\nThat I could call my own, except
\nMy notebook and a pen
\nA million heavy heartbreaks
\nAnd one or two good friends
\nWhile those that called me crazy
\nAre still in the same place
\nOr laying underneath the ground
\nJust a name without a trace
\nOf anything they used to be
\nBecause they refused to change
\nWhile their crazy was addiction
\nAnd they called my crazy strange
\nThey thought I was delusional
\nBut it was something I could see
\nIn some distant future
\nIt was waiting there, for me
\nSo let this be a lesson
\nLook at me standing tall
\nIn the center of the kingdom
\nThat I built from something small
\nDon’t let them tell you differently
\nIf you have a dream for you
\nGive it everything you’ve got
\nAnd make that dream come true.
\n~Mandy Kocsis\u00a92023~<\/p>\n
Prompt: write something from the view of yourself 10 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They told me I was wasting time When I could just beg for change While I sat at the computer Writing poems for a page That had yet to exist, you see I’d not yet found the strength To give my writing to the world…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1516,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1136,441,5],"tags":[5765,2164,5826,5827],"class_list":["post-128284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-prompts","category-poetry-prompt-responses","category-poetry-prompts","tag-2023poetrymarathon","tag-hour2","tag-mandyslandpoetrt","tag-mandyslandpoetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128320,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128284\/revisions\/128320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}