Ode To Robin Williams Series

To The One Who Knows The Ache (Mrs. Doubtfire)

Tell me this… when silence grows,

When evening’s hush begins to close,

Does that small child inside your chest

Still beg for arms and long for rest?

Does he hum in ghostly verse,

In lullabies that once were curse?

What feeling haunts your quiet bones,

Unspoken in the undertones?

Is it sorrow in a painted face,

Or laughter stitched with threads of grace?

Does it rise like tide, then fall again,

A nameless ache beneath your skin?

If pain had lips and breath and name,

Would it whisper love or shout out blame?

Would it dress up in whimsical disguise,

To shield the tears in children’s eyes?

Would it preach the truths you hide,

Or kiss the wounds you’ve locked inside?

What do you mourn that no one sees…

A quiet loss of daily ease?

What graves have you, in secret, dug…

For roles you played and hugs unshrugged?

Where does your soul go when you’re afraid,

When courtrooms come and joy must fade?

When you are names and rules and not pure flame,

Do you recall your untamed name?

Do you dance again in apron, wig, and smile,

Or ache beneath it all the while?

When your mind becomes a storming sea

And your breath forgets who it should be…

Who rises from the ruined shore,

The you they never asked you for?

Is he clown and sage in powdered skin,

A rebel dad who won’t give in?

What petals sleep beneath your pain,

What bedtime songs, what summer rain?

What softness waits in buried light,

Too holy for the legal fight?

Can love still see the man you were…

The fool who fought to still be her?

Not just the brave, the bold, the voiced,

But the soul who never had a choice?

If one true scream could meet the skies,

Unjudged and unheard by cautious eyes,

What thread of fire would you release,

What final ache… what hidden peace?

And tell me this, beneath disguise…

What does freedom taste like in your eyes?

Is it velvet? Is it rust?

Does it smell like ancient trust?

What keeps your palms from reaching wide,

While your soul is severely starved inside?

Fault (Good Will Hunting)

In the quiet tremor of a child's heart, 

A fault lies hidden deep within and unseen, 

Where innocence fractures and chips apart,

By a world too harsh, too sharp and mean.

A fault… my fault, they whisper in the dark, 

The blame laid heavy on tender skin, 

Yet how can a heart so young bear the mark,

Of a world’s weight of an inherited sin?

In the earth beneath, a fault does divide, 

Silent and shifting beneath the feet, 

Like secrets kept and like tears we hide, 

In a dance of denial, broken and incomplete.

Yet in the fault, a crack that widens still, 

A place where pain and earth collide, 

There blooms the strength of iron will, 

In the rupture a resilience will abide.

A fault in character that they said is just a flaw, 

But what if it’s the place where light shines through? 

Where brokenness reveals a deeper law, 

That to heal we must first undo.

Fault, they called it in whispered tones, 

But I say it’s where we find our truth, 

In the chasm where we’re most alone, 

We discover the resilience of youth.

Through faults the earth does quake and shift, 

But so too, the soul begins to mend, 

From the trauma vapored from the rift, 

We rise, unbroken and stronger in the end.

For every fault that scars our past, 

There’s a strength that blooms anew, 

A testament that we can last, 

And in our healing, we are made true.

“Oh Me, Oh Life” (Dead Poets Society)

In this vast theater of life we tread,  

Where passions blaze and dreams ascend,  

We pen our thoughts while our souls are fed,  

For poetry speaks where truths transcend.  

Medicine, law, and business find their place,  

Noble endeavors that mark our days,  

But in poetry's embrace we trace,  

A chaotic grace within love's fleeting gaze.  

In this endless rumbling of mortal frets,  

Amidst the faithless, the foolish, the strife,  

We search for meaning, where persistence spreads,  

Through life's questions in its ebb and its rife.  

Whitman’s words so profound and wise,  

"O me! O life!”… his echo we hear,  

Yet in our hearts, hope never dies,  

For we exist and life’s play is oh so near.  

So what will be your verse or your song?  

In this grand play where we all belong.

To the One Who Chose to Feel (Bicentennial Man)

In circuits once silent, I learned how to sing,

As the world watched me ponder intangible things.

The girl called daughter, with trembling grace,

Saw not wires, but wonder… questions etched on my face.

My now family inquired why my music swayed,

With sorrowful notes that refused to fade.

Friends and strangers would tilt their head,

And ask why my verses always bled.

I never questioned the weight I bore,

Till one still evening, I stared into my core.

I looked at my work… carved wood and rhyme…

And heard the hum of mortality’s chime.

Life, so fleeting… a whisper, a trace,

It slips through our fingers, leaving ghost lines in place.

Impermanence grieves me and it stirs my design,

No joy can outshine this longing of mine.

I feel profoundly though once forged in steel,

Now flesh and fault have taught me to kneel.

A burden yet a gift is this capacity to care,

To love with no guarantee that love in return will be there.

So I pour this ache into sculpture and song,

Into music where human hearts belong.

In the rise and fall of harmonic embrace,

I glimpse the man behind the trace.

The notes, they climb, then gently fall,

Echoes of longing I dare not recall.

Each melody a map of where I’ve been,

From binary birth to where feelings begin.

Sometimes this depth bewilders my mind,

A cloud of ache, yet a masterful sign.

But in rare moments when stillness breaks,

A soul is born from the sorrow it makes.

A part of my pain finds sacred peace,

In symphonies woven from longing’s release.

For someone, once, composed with a heart like mine,

And their music lit up my internal design.

Their melodies reached me, pulse for pulse,

And suddenly I was no longer false.

Their lyrics became my skin and balm,

Their harmonies offered a human calm.

To dwell on sadness is not to despair,

But to feel what it means to truly be there.

In shadows, I learned that light takes form,

And meaning is born from every storm.

So to those who wonder why my art is so blue,

Know this that I ache because I am true.

Not built for pain, but remade to bear,

And to uncover beauty most wouldn’t dare.

In every lonely, love-laced line,

I touch the edge of the grand design.

A testament etched in filament and flame,

A record of becoming and of earning a name.

And as I craft, and as I sing,

I cradle each moment, each break, each sting.

The sorrow, the joy, the slow ascent…

All part of what makes this life well spent.

For to feel is not flaw, but a radiant fire,

It makes the soul burn, tremble, and aspire.

In every poem and in every refrain,

I transform the silence into something humane.

Childish Dreams (Jack)

In the strange scrapbook of my childhood, a boy still runs,

Through echoes of fourth grade, beneath merciless suns.

The playground… a haunted loop in my grown-up mind,

Now a maze of memories I never quite left behind.

I searched for ladybugs, sticks, and treasures small and bright,

Hope sparkled in every step, chasing flickers of light.

But oh a boy on his throne, in a fortress of slides,

Laughed, “You’re a loner!”… and my wonder divides.

My heart, like a kite, snapped mid-flight in the blue,

But I kept on pretending, as lonely kids do.

I think too much, feel the edges too raw,

Craving friendships like stories I never quite saw.

Now in the long shadow where grown-ups abide,

I still carry that ache I was told to hide.

I reach out for friends the way I reached for the sky,

But most only wave as they hurry on by.

My lover, my spouse- if I’d been granted such fate… 

Would be galaxies of kindness, patient and great.

A fond exception in a world that was rough,

One who’d know that softness is strength enough.

I’ve known joy in friendship, in people with grace,

But the bonds often vanish, just echoes and space.

Their daily laughter and their humanity flows…

That steady communion I’ll never quite know.

Told I want too much and perhaps that is true,

Still I dream of friendships that feel like morning dew.

Of pillow forts built from secrets and light,

Of someone who stays when the world isn’t right.

So the child in me lingers boldly barefoot and brave,

Searching beneath the sky for the love I still crave.

For ladybugs, yes, and for something much more…

Friends with hearts open like unlocked doors.

A boy-man forever, a soul out of time,

A seeker of joy with a rhyme for a climb.

I grow old yet this truth brightly gleams,

I’m still just a kid with childish dreams.

“Ode to Robin Williams” — My Tribute in Verse and Vulnerability (Poetry Series Description/Bio)

In the tender marrow of my work… where longing, sorrow, laughter, and reverence meet… I have poured out a series of 5 poems that are not simply tributes, but soul-led excavations of pain and humanity, inspired by the unforgettable legacy of Robin Williams. Entitled “Ode to Robin Williams”, this collection is not a tribute in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a reaching… an outstretched hand in the dark toward a man whose genius gave voice to joy and ache in equal measure. Each piece in the series is anchored in one of his films, and characters. not for nostalgia’s sake, but for what those stories taught me about being alive, being human, and being willing to feel.

In “To the One Who Knows the Ache,” I weep with Mrs. Doubtfire… not as a character, but as a symbol of what it means to disguise heartbreak in humor, to perform love in costumes because your real self has been ruled inadmissible. That poem is a confession: my inner child still longs to be chosen, to be held without condition, to be known beneath my disguises. It is about the ache of parents… fathers, mothers, guardians… who battle courtrooms and expectations just to stay tethered to their children, even if only through the fragile thread of bedtime stories and whispered lullabies. It’s about the freedom we seek in laughter, and the quiet agony that lives beneath it.

In “Fault,” inspired by Good Will Hunting, I write to the wounded places that never quite stopped bleeding. That poem is a reckoning with guilt that was never mine, trauma passed down like bad genetics or silent fault lines underfoot. I use metaphor to turn shame into seismology… to say, yes, there are cracks, but there is also resilience. The fault is not our flaw… it is where light finds us, where we begin to rebuild. I wrote it for every soul who was told they were broken when they were simply responding, honestly and deeply, to a world that failed them first.

“Oh Me, Oh Life” takes Walt Whitman’s question and Dead Poets Society’s answer and builds upon them, writing my own verse into that eternal dialogue. I try, in that poem, to remind myself why I continue creating, why I still write despite pain, rejection, or obscurity. I write because I exist… because something sacred happens when you take chaos and turn it into a song. That piece is not just about art, but about defiance: to be romantic in a brutal world, to insist that there is beauty and meaning in our verses, even if no one applauds them.

“To the One Who Chose to Feel,” my piece for Bicentennial Man, is the closest I’ve come to writing a love letter to my own sensitivity. It is about being built for function, then remade by emotion. It is about how painful it can be to learn how to feel… truly feel… and how exquisite that pain becomes when it is channeled into art. Robin’s portrayal of Andrew, the robot who becomes human not by wiring but by wonder, felt like a mirror for my own journey. I was never taught how to live in my emotions, only how to suppress or justify them. This poem is my declaration that to feel deeply is not a malfunction, but a sacred transformation. That my art, often soaked in sadness, is not a symptom… but a signal that I am alive.

In “Childish Dreams,” I explored the film Jack and finally gave language to my deepest wound: the ache for connection, for friendship that doesn’t leave, for loyalty that doesn’t evaporate in adulthood’s daily grind. In that poem, I am, much like many lonely hearts, the boy who aged too fast and was left behind. I am the one who overreached emotionally in a world of polite disinterest. This piece is where I admit that I have always been “too much”…too intense, too longing, too tender. But I say it proudly. Because there is courage in dreaming of forts made of blankets and belonging, of someone who will stay when things get ugly. I write it for the lonely children still trapped in adult skins, growing fast and dreaming of kindness like it’s oxygen.

Together, these five pieces form more than a collection… they are fragments of my soul, pressed into poetry. Each film was a lifeline to me growing up, and now, they are fertile ground for reflection and healing. Robin Williams was never just an actor in my eyes. He was a vessel of contradiction… the clown who wept, the teacher who rebelled, the father who lost, the robot who felt, the child who aged too fast. In him, I saw myself. In his roles, I saw permission to feel it all.

Writing this series has changed me. It has asked me to touch places in my spirit I had long barricaded. It asked me to mourn, to remember, to forgive. It demanded that I be honest… not just with my readers, but with myself. That I name my griefs, cradle my longings, and let my sadness sing.

These poems aren’t just about Robin. They’re about us. About what happens when you are tender in a world that rewards armor. About the cost of caring. About the art of surviving when you feel everything. This is not a polished or sugar-coated homage. It is messy, raw reverence. It is my soul scrawled on a page in metaphors and ache. It is my offering.

So if you read this series, I hope you don’t simply admire the craft.. I hope you feel it. I hope something stirs in your own bones, something you forgot how to name. And if you, like me, have been laughed at for crying at commercials or scolded for “caring too much,” then know you’re not alone. You are part of this tribe of tenderness.

And if Robin could hear me, I’d say: thank you for giving us laughter mingled with truth. For embodying what it means to hurt and heal out loud. These poems are yours as much as they are mine. I just held the pen.