The Greatest Writer Alive

Saw this poem on TWBE and had to share it here. It's about stolen bicycles.

FIXED

I hope all my stolen bicycles
got ridden fast
and passed around often
had their best parts swapped out
and traded for drugs
that were used to write good songs
and have good young fun
like stealing bigger things
and crashing them into walls
and getting arrested on accident
and getting ratted out by a guy
who only days earlier
let you burn him with a cigarette lighter
because he said you were brothers for life.

I hope they found new homes
in abandoned warehouses
and darkened alleys
and were taken in by older men
who could no longer hold a license,
were running from something,
weren’t supposed to be here at all.

I hope those men took off on them
as far as they could get
before their old knees and old hearts gave in
and stranded them
some place they’d never been
and never thought they’d be
and they met someone there
at a store
on a dark road
who reminded them of a daughter
they hadn’t spoken to in some time
and they tried to call her
but the line was dead.

I hope the remains
were salvaged for scrap
by industrious someones
good with their hands
who saw promise in those old beasts
and roped them to a roof
and drove them through the rain
and into a converted garage
where they were stripped with gasoline
and fit with different pieces
from orphaned others
and made strangely better
spray painted a young child’s favorite color
and given as a gifts
from one person to another
the first gift they would ever get
that would teach them the value
of falling down
and getting back up again.

—Dallas Clayton