I want to run away with you,
have no plans, no ideas,
end up somewhere we never imagined we’d be,
and do whatever it takes to simply enjoy each other,
I want to leave everything that is holding us still,
Be free,
finally,
to be happy without anything,
reminding us of our failures.
We can have the chance we never had,
A different life through subtraction.
We can be all that’s left.
Live somewhere without history.
I have parents and friends nearing retirement age,
but they resemble children as much as me,
it can’t be good for the mind or the heart,
to hold on to such nonsensical hope.
we keep making plans we never see through.
replacing achievement with new ideas.
Am I willing to let go?
Learn another language and disappear.
Who will measure my pain?
I wonder how long it’ll take for reality to set in.
It’s all so bleak when night pins you down,
Smiles in your face and waits for the end,
To take you away from the small things you loved,
and overlooked.
I see the future and the past,
But cannot tell them apart.
We could measure the distance between,
our thoughts and honesty,
Or we can step away from our homes,
and laugh at the shape of the moon.
You caught me without the fog,
blown clear by an extrinsic force,
Though, really, how many faces do you have,
And are we the same?
We fooled other bodies under clear skies,
returning in the safety reclusion,
Lies linger over empty glasses,
until we change shape again.
I want you to ruin me,
Tear me down.
I express a sense of worth I don’t believe I have.
Secretly, I want you to show me how worthless I am.
Destroy the fantasy of value.
Which takes the most absurd shapes.
Crushing others with my need to be validated.
I can’t love anyone who doesn’t hate me as much as I hate myself.
I was left alone too long.
Or couldn’t handle my own head.
Time is irrelevant when I’m involved,
I’ll catch up.
My mind is frozen,
Stuck in a hope or a dream,
In which the world was hand painted,
And we could be in love.
I write about you,
I think about you,
Always aware of the illusion the word creates,
You wouldn’t recognize the you I use,
Or a hundred of you will.
I am writing about you,
I am thinking about you.
There are times to be serious,
even if it’s the kind of sarcastic serious that looks full of composure but, simply, is a cynical resignation. I spend much too much time wondering how everyone else is doing it. Succeeding or failing, whatever. But living. Not struggling to figure out how to feed themselves enough times a day. Or take out the recycling, and get the mail. Or pull some weeds in the backyard. There’s a 45 minute precursor for me to get out of bed. Another before I end up in the shower. It resembles OCD a bit, in that there’s a vague feeling I’m reaching for before I feel ready to (insert verb here). There’s a lot of inaction that fuels stress before erupted in a fury of doing. Often undirected doing, but sometimes hyper-focused. I’ll write ten thousand words or clean the house without really realizing I’m doing it. I know I’m writing, but the volume is ignored.
But there’s always something. How overwhelming is life? I don’t think of good old days, or long for any previous periods of time, but there is a level of complexity to being alive right now that probably wasn’t present prior to democracy. Not to mention cell phone cameras. And it’s this weird pull of hating how informed one should be. Keeping up with politics so insane rich people stop hurting less fortunate people and trying to send up back to pre-democracy. And police shootings. And killer whales. And people ignoring that pigs are smarter than their pets. And much more just at home. Then looking out at the rest of the world. Countries I can’t understand. Countries that don’t look like life compared to smart phones and virtual reality. How much easier would it be to forget all of that and have fun? Then Peter Singer shows up again with John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. I’m neck deep in Julian Baggini.
I go to bed at the same spot I woke up in.
I have a lot of stupid questions that I keep trying to ask.
A long time has passed since we last talked,
I can’t imagine the last time my name popped into your head.
We were young,
Everything meant so much and so little.
Especially in retrospect.
When we can see how small life was.
How small the scope of our vision,
And how superfluous our responses were.
I thought of you today,
For some reason, or no reason,
Just because it happens from time to time.
I still miss what it feels like to be confused and in love,
And not in love and young.
Sharing so many moments with you.
There is a gulf so large,
I will never be able to reach across it.
Pull you back to me, or join you on the other side.
I didn’t think about how much life can change.
Ten years is so long.
I can’t think about ten years.
When I visit the images and the memories,
It feels like a handful of moments between me now and me then.
Like I can touch you.
I’m sorry.
It’s late,
Another night of a cold couch,
Wondering when the future arrives.
Thinking it should have happened by now,
For a perspective from outside looking in,
Able to analyze what everything meant.
There’s a sharp fear,
Gripping and holding like a sickness,
Waiting just outside the periphery,
Then it’s all over.
The end.
I will be ripped apart by time,
And scattered throughout the universe,
But right now I’m watching a fence go up.
Molecules assault my ears,
They’re processed and organized,
In an organ that makes sense of the world.
I can add up all the years I’ve been alive,
And round them off the end,
But right now I’m looking at people driving by.
With their own concerns.
While I’m scared my vision is failing.
And I will stop making sense of the world.
Crumbles Away 