I’m hoping I can get to a point where I’ve made twenty of these over a long period of time, and I can look back on these knowing I became a better writer. That my poetry is someday not so cliche, that I found my own unique way of expressing meaning, yet for now I’m here, simply on pieces #13-24.
I took myself too seriously on this one (especially comparative to my skill), it’s where my heart led me. As it is with everything else I ever write.
some kinda way
This world got me feeling some kinda way, some kinda way.
Sometimes I’ve got nothing to say, things in my way, thoughts all astray
Others it’s all okay.
Laying in bed, dreams in my head
Wondering if I should be dead, the fears that I fled, times that I bled
Others in sheer gratitude, the world and I become wed.
How basic the words that I use to rhyme, the ways I waste all my time
My dreams are sublime, results from the tumultuous climb, all by design
Others I can’t help but feel the weight of my grime
This world got me feeling some kinda way, some kinda way.
Sometimes I’ve got nothing to say, things in my way, thoughts all astray
Others it’s all okay.
Laying in bed, dreams in my head
Wondering if I should be dead, the fears that I fled, times that I bled
But I’m still aware, butterflies in the air, flamboyance and flair
More than my heart can bear, there’s reasons I care
Ones I swear make this all complete.
You know, I’m really not all that at this poetry sort of thing, I don’t know if I’m supposed to rhyme or just let it be, and even when I do, it’s really quite basic.
And like, it’s kinda pretentious too. Like “oh, I write poetry! I’m a writer!” because it feels like the best answer when people ask what it is I write about.
Sci-fi or journalism or a bazillion other ways words can be written are something people latch onto instead of existentialism and the self concept.
I don’t even see myself as a good writer much beyond a specific context being what it is I happen to feel the need to say, and when I say it, it’s often really direct and lacks the imaginative whimsy that is generally what’s so enthralling about this medium.
I’m gonna keep writing these short things, and I think they’re gonna always be the most ignored because well, they suck.
My other stuff that I’m proficient at is just better.
But there’s something so powerful about the thought of an isolated sentence that hits like a bag of bricks
And being a writer is so many different things that, in a sense, it’s whatever the hell I want it to be.
This is just what I am.
Everything is simply whatever I felt the desire to express, whether I’m exceptional or not
And well, I’m a stubborn s.o.b., if there’s anything I know, it’s plugging away at a thankless task
I’ll write a hundred more just for sport, and maybe they’ll all be bad
“The winner takes it all, the loser’s standing small. Besides the victory, that’s her destiny.”
It’s an ABBA lyric I think about from time to time, I can’t seem to shake it
“The gods may throw the dice, their minds as cold as ice, and someone way down here loses someone dear”
No one’s really supposed to be good at anything, it’s something you decide for yourself whether or not you get there
Genetics can define certain factors, but a lot of what’s attributed to natural talent is simply the desire for application
I’m not supposed to be good at poetry or any of this, it’s not some carved place in this world built for me
If anything, no one gives a shit. Thousands of pieces like mine have been left untouched by time or eyes.
There’s hardly even some like, grand celestial meaning here. I’m creating something I know will be forgotten.
It’s selfish more than anything because for me, it’s being willing to accept mediocrity in opposition to being so consumed by all the grandeur, a reminder of how small I really am
The exceptional who spent all their time stand tall before their craft, they claim all the minds
The winner takes it all
“The judges will decide, the likes of me abide.
Spectators of the show, always staying low
The game is on again, a lover or a friend
A big thing or small, the winner takes it all”
masquerade
A whip made of lighting, and a gaze made of steel
Legend has it it is he who controls this palace
Black mask of masquerade, a scholar’s mind and a stern man’s face
Short golden locks that own the wind, all with gritted teeth
Masked man in the sky, I yearn to please
May I touch your beloved steed?
To feel the air against my face
Slayer of kings, purger of empires
To whom I owe my humbled grace
Remove these shackles from my feet
Remember who you used to be
I command you, set me free.
For too long, it was doubt that killed my dreams
The thorns that stuck in my side, that told me I could never rule the skies
Never has a great leader existed who was controlled by shame
It will bow for me
psalm 139:16
I can say I want just a few more minutes, but I know that’s not true. To share just one more song, tell one more story, ask one more question. I will always want one more. I want to tell you about how I somehow hadn’t listened to Dire Straits until today. I want to tell you about how much I hated that damn infographic assignment I recently did. I want to tell you I learned I can’t even do a pullup. I want to hear what you think about what I have to say to my counselor. I wish people knew what the hell I was talking about, who the hell I even am and where it came from, and I’m just left searching for the source.
Fuck, man. I finally understand why you were so proud of me and now you’re not here for me to tell you. I see why the world is beautiful, I see why I’m so great, so capable, so able. This future me I can’t share with you at all. I don’t even try because no answer will come through. Life is always going to ebb and flow, people will enter and people will go at the Lord’s whims but you don’t immediately love someone who enters your life, but you can damn sure love someone who leaves. It makes it feel unbalanced, unfair, so overwhelmingly unpredictable. It doesn’t even feel like I’m your son half the time anymore. Everyone’s going to enter and leave and I’m just stuck with me, the only person who will ever always be there, with my memories looming over me. This is one of many things that will happen to me, and I have to handle it every damn time, a hundred new mountains to climb.
(It is here the author puts his face in his left hand, and holds the A key with his right.)
(Watching every line go by, he doesn’t know what to say. He only knows that he feels, and he feels with might)
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Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
iris
“Look into my eyes”
These words gave young me a lot of trouble
Have you ever considered the majesty of eyesight? The intensity of gaze?
What other part of the body is ever truly black like the pupil? Utterly abyssal.
Having to handle all the energy that’s focused on my own existence
All that I am and all that I ever was
A serpent wraps around my spine, it beckons
“Feast yourself upon the world before you and comprehend its vastness.
Understand just how little this moment lasts.”
I sit humiliated, I can’t pretend
Chasing a tongue twisted infinity
Tied to a stone by the end
Accepting your eyes upon mine is an acceptance of fault for my existence
A contract binded by shame and decreed by the judge
The moment built too and the source of regret
A trial I seem to fail time and time again
I know they’re there and it’s merely two dark dots
I just can’t look back
When I looked into your eyes, I felt as though I finally understood the part of socializing that intoxicates so many. The vivid, transparent green sporadically dotted with the purple lights of the room. Perhaps it was simply the famed magnetism of feminine charm, but such rays emitted from no other part of you. I remember your skin was soft, your hair was long, but of all things, what clung to me was how you looked at me while you were on my shoulder. This unwitting power that beckoned me to believe I loved you even when I knew I really didn't. I don't know if I’ll always recall that moment, but it convinced me I would, and that's a powerful thing.
Never was I as vulnerable as when these eyes looked into mine, and never was I as dejected as when they went away. I wish I was good enough to hold someone's gaze. I wish I had the strength.
push, where is pull?
You’ve gotta be better to get what you want. You’ve gotta change depending on the world’s response. The world will never give to you, love you for “who you are”, but what you give to it. It just so happens to give more, you have to be more, what is “you” has to grow, to strengthen, to swell. Every decision you decide to make, and every idea you decide to refuse becomes important.
What is it you want? What is it you have to do to get there? How does the world respond to your attempt to do so? Is it as you hoped, and if not, do you desire to do something different to reach where you initially wanted or stay as you are and reach for somewhere different? You can want whatever it is you desire, but you have to actually do what it takes to get it. It will never be given to you. You are not good enough by virtue for what you want, as wants are inherently auxiliary and finite in quantity. You are good enough to be alive, there are rights you have as someone who is alive, but your wants are your own damn fault. You’ve gotta do everything involved with getting what it is you want, not just what you like, and you’re not special enough to get there some different way than everyone else. Adapt to yourself, but stick to the plan. You can do anything, but you have to do everything to be that anything, and if you aren’t willing to do that, then live dissatisfied, whiny, and unactualized, because that’s how you’ll sound, and that’s how you’ll be responded to. Like a child. You can be a child when you’re 25, you can’t be a child when you’re 40.
It's like I have to be everything to mean something. In order to even be worthy of meaning, I must be the most intelligent in all subjects, most charismatic in all situations, and easiest on the eyes in all lighting. On this planet, greatness is worth nothing, exceptionalism is worth the world. There exists no middle ground, all that makes up who I’ve constructed currently exists in the same stasis of public conscience as though I had done nothing with my existence. My mind is just slightly too ignorant, my persona slightly too off kilter, my body slightly too pudgy. It's as if I am purely hideous and unknowing, one who shouldn't exist at all. I know this not to be true, but it's hard to believe any of it ends up mattering.
I can't do it all alone. No one can do it all alone. Yet how come in order to have anyone, you must be all this? Only when I no longer have need for you do you come to me to listen. Why is this how we love?
I think this is what leads our youth to running themselves dry. Doing all they can to not enter the purgatory they created. And yet, as is the fate of all majorities, most of us won't be among the best. What's one man to do but live within this world born by circumstance? I’ll keep clawing at the concrete walls, and it will never be enough.
we’ve killed each other once before
Real evil is out there. It exists. It is not some boogeyman, it is at all moments possible.
History is not a mere collection of stories. It is the capability of us, the power of ourselves, and how hatred came before peace. We are animals, and only for a mere few thousands of years have we been what could be called “human”. Even since we have become more brutish than conceivable before we created words. Genocide turned from the physical limits of an individual to the delegations of a man upon a tall chair. Craft your finest blade and meet the Lord's fury.
In past and future lives we ourselves are the leaders of our nations, our tribes, our worlds. To the ends of the Earth we have been slain a thousand times and been made to kill the same amount. All the ways in which one has ever been abused has been experienced by us both in doing and having been done upon, for each party involved was this same species. You and I have clawed against the wall to try and survive each other and each watched as we failed.
Every emperor, president, king, and dictator was made of human flesh with a brain that looked like yours or mine. The monster inside them is their own humanity, not an eldritch being. It is not that you could never be evil by virtue of being you, it is that you can always become evil through the means of being yourself. Have the right buttons pushed, read just the wrong things at the wrongest time, have been hurt by a specific person or system, and you too will yearn for evil. This is universal. This is who we've always been.
Good is a fight, the creator of necessary war. Evil is what is succumbed too, good is what is pushed through. You can always be evil, but please, you must be good.
“They have seen my strength for themselves, have watched me rise from the darkness of war, dripping with my enemies’ blood. I drove five great giants into chains, chased all of that race from the earth. I swam in the blackness of night, hunting monsters out of the ocean, and killing them one by one; death was my errand and the fate they had earned.”
Excerpt from Beowulf
faerie chatter
The cost of the mortal body is to always be perceived.
Eternal whispers down every chamber, pupils down every aisle
Arched backs and split tongues speak nonsense in the distance
A careful reminder that existence in and of itself is to be a mistake
Adoration is imaginary, to have been born at all means you will never be a god.
Stand before the angel of death, heed this call
Within the life of some other, you can never be right.
At best, there will be disdain for how someone can appear too perfect, too pristine.
Grass pricks at one’s feet, yet it is still lied in, romanticized, and missed when it is gone
The sun is too hot, and the moon is so foreboding.
Beauty exists in spite of perfection
Never will the peak of the summit be made of organic matter
Everything leading up to it will be, and light will hold its place.
I imagine how others talk about me. I try to peel back the veil and peer into the minds of everyone else. There are things you say about someone when they're not around, good or bad. I know these exist for me.
To others standards, I am lesser, as we are incentivized by different things.
I recall a time I merely mentioned I was taking a business ethics class and my uncle laughed at the concept. It was then I knew that I was driven by prosperity, and him by accumulation. The times I was called naive, inferior, ignorant, unsuccessful, incapable, I laugh aloud and shake my head. Others believe I’m aiming too low, not seeing the stars I see beyond the sky. We simply fell in love with different galaxies.
Even out of those who are or are supposed to be close to me will be ones who at times or maybe entirely will believe that I lead a mistaken life. How could I live this way? How could I uphold myself this way? They'll ask and tilt their heads. I do the same for them, and I’m no better judge.
Relatives constantly told my parents how wrong they were in raising me, and yet I ended up literate, autonomous, and capable. I was raised within a herd of black sheep, because life requires a different way. To be appreciated would be nice but is perhaps the ficklest of things. I yearn to be adored but understand it can simply never be, as I love my purpose greater than any compliment.
There is no place I belong. There's no space I can escape these dissenting voices. I have to create it.
a god, I am not
I’m gonna be not good enough my whole life
Like Zeno’s Paradox, the turtle will get first place every time
There will always be something that exists to be spited, the uninvited elephant that cannot be removed
It's never polite enough to wear camouflage, and even if you try to paint it that way it'll knock over something with it's trunk.
Seven petals to a flower, a deep sigh I take
When dawn arrives, will this all be the same?
Ink flows through the feed and thoughts through the nib
My hand tremors from the shame but my nerves only feel a gentle wind
Everything grows without me, people walk past my back having conversations I’ll never understand
This body I notice and these sights I absorb are as though they should exist without each other
I convinced myself I was meant to be a deity
Not for power, but for observation, a cosmic fly on the wall
Acknowledging my own responsibility is an overbearing weight
I can watch the world forever, but I can't handle being a part of it.
The way the sun reflects off the imperfect surface of rivers, it mesmerizes me
I can't help but fall in love.
How come I can never be that worthy?
My eyes lack caverns, my hair lacks grace
My tone lacks persuasion, my style lacks maturity or finesse
Trees don't have to improve their form to be worthy, they simply root perfectly.
The human, on the other hand, must always change.
The crimson tide from head to toe exists to perpetuate motion
I do my best to find peace, but I can never become it
I’ll never be enough to defeat subjectivity
I’ll breathe and feel the air be free and love that it could never be me.
There's no warmth like sun through a window
Feel its glow and fall to sleep in peace
“and we both know you hear the whole spiel about being extremely emotionally mature or whatever but i think that's kind of hampering you in this aspect. i think it kinda hampered me, too. at least for me, i was able to take a step back from myself, and just jump on my flaws until i ran out of energy. when you're so in-tune with what you perceive is good/bad about you, i think you tend to be able to identify those things in others; that's something i got good at, and i projected myself into theoretical situations and just was, like you say, completely unable to fit into that mold. and i think some of what changed my thought process for me was the idea that relationships aren't something that one necessarily can plan for, or something that someone can just....control, or expect. sure, you can regulate interaction, you can regulate when, how, where you talk. but you can't regulate feelings, and you can't regulate reactions. there's no successful relationship where both sides, prior to the relationship, envision their level of homogeny within that person's life. there are controllable aspects, but in the end it's not something you plan for. envisionment is, therefore, something that isn't worth thinking about. you let things happen to you, and life just keeps moving. it's fine to struggle with imagining someone being attracted to you, i still struggle with that, but in the end it's not your job to worry about that. you should present yourself the best you can, and not try and project your likely self-conscious version of yourself onto someone else subconsciously. i used to do that too. it won me nothing but pity. attraction is fickle, it's unpredictable, but at the same it's not something singular; everyone deals with it's effects and it has wide reaching effects. now, granted, i think what helped me was having someone actually attracted to me, and you haven't really experienced that yet, unfortunately. but at the same time, that was a confidence issue on my side, and clearly theres an aspect of that for you but i think you need to change the way you fundamentally think about romantic relationships rather than be more confident. and flaws are subjective. you can struggle with these flaws all you want, but you're winning no battles projecting them into a relationship; as everyone sees things differently, obviously.”
- a long text from a good friend
my final hour
If I had an hour left to live, I think I’d write about it.
Right now, it’s 11:30pm and frankly any guilty pleasure I’d want to eat without remorse would waste too much of my precious time to go get it even if it wasn’t too late. I’d probably just go grab an apple from the fridge, put on my headphones, queue some of my favorite songs, and sit right here as I am, and write about it. It’d be hard to know what to say either, trying to encapsulate a whole life of me trying to figure out what to say within such a short amount of time is daunting yet I don’t think I’d worry about it. I’d just say what I’d have left to give.
People around me know I love them, I don’t need to prove that, nor am I wise enough to provide the world with my final message besides maybe my current vendetta that people should believe in themselves. Perhaps I would spend at least half of that time left writing what’s essentially a gratitude journal, everything I can think of that I was blessed to have and be. That sounds nice. I’m not sure what would be done with my belongings, I’m a little embarrassed of the state my room is in too, but I don’t think that’s my burden either. My barren walls and many boxes, one could even wonder if an individual person even lived in it, only hinted at by a poster of my favorite manga given to me by a friend and the letter I got for making Dean’s List on my wall by the door.
It’d be hard for me not to be weighed down by the thought of how my father would cope with losing me, how my roommate of 3 years would cope with losing his best friend, how the memory of me would always be about what I could’ve or would’ve been, but there’d be nothing I could do either. Grief is a heavy burden, but it also moves on whether or not you want it to. There’s nothing I can do other than exist as myself in those final moments. Maybe I’d take a few minutes to go outside and breathe fresh air one last time, but it also might be too cold to feel worth it. I wouldn’t have the time to think through that decision either way. Perhaps it’s fate that I’d spend my last hour doing as I’d done the thousands before it, thinking about thinking.
I’d certainly wondered what the hell I was working towards this whole time, so often do I feel so aimless. I have a dumb liberal arts degree everyone tells me is useful but even after I graduated I’m not really sure what the hell to do with it. I’d have spent so much of my life learning what it was to even be human, what it meant to think and feel, what it meant to speak and be understood only to have always felt like I’d fallen short. I’d even feel a little angry, wondering why this is what I wanted when this “want” was abstract nothing that gets tilted heads at best and direct laughs more often. At the same time, my worries of the future would cease to be, I’d be free from all the fear, I’d die in a world I knew was at least ok, able to escape the future many won’t. Lord knows I have no idea how in the world to know how to advance my career, or know what to check for in a car when you’re buying it, or how to haggle insurance call centers, the world let me live soft in that way and I’d die a flabby mess. I never had to fight to truly survive, I’ve lived with support this whole time, and I’d have gotten to be so hedonistic and create my own concept of misery for what would seem like it was simply for sport. I’d have been allowed to not know what the real world was like, and I’m not sure I deserved it either.
I want to prove myself, I want to be something, it always feels like I’m climbing to be there yet am never there. Maybe death would let me cope with the idea that maybe it was enough, maybe it was all I could have been, but it also makes me wonder if I chose the wrong path and if I had dedicated myself to something different while being the same person it would have meant something. What if I had loved physics? Or basketball? Or optometry? What if I went to school in New York or what if I didn’t go to school all together because I was a groundbreaking musician who had a show to play in Amsterdam? I can’t truly say I “did my best” because there’s not some individual craft I dedicated my whole being to, or at least something that felt tangible. I’m chasing the concept of being like Kobe Bryant was for basketball, like Steve Jobs was obsessed with engineering the most sleek phone, like my parents were for providing a good life for me. I don’t know anything I’ve spent a truly awe inspiring amount of time on, and the things in contention in terms of length I’m not sure inspire awe at all, but maybe I’m just blind. My whole life has been simply not failing, and maybe that’s impressive in and of itself as it feels like relative to others I have shockingly few vices, but I want to be the best at something, I know that obsession is within me, I can’t seem to love something enough to decide that it’s the thing.
The closest thing I’d have was writing and more directly, crawling through my own brain trying to verbalize what I observe about myself. My many Google Docs and my few dozen Substack drafts would pass along with me, held behind a password barrier in some server database until it decided to shut down for good and accept death too. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve simply never decided to share what others would end up considering my greatest work, or if it at least contained bits and pieces of that sort of feeling, but at the same time I don’t think there really is. Perhaps I don’t have the best view of what it is people value about me, but I know when I feel satisfied when I type a sentence out and it fits what’s in my head like a bird’s feet on an old man’s calloused palm. At the end of the day, like everything else I enjoyed, sought out, tried to become, I wasn’t actually special at it, I merely was.
I got to be alive and experience those things for myself, and perhaps that’s all that could’ve ever been asked. I had two working hands, two working legs, two working eyes, and one working brain. I wasn’t accidentally left in a car in the summer as an infant, I didn’t take just the wrong spill off a bike as a kid, I didn’t walk into just the wrong person as a young adult, I had 19 whole years and I loved so many things. I got to hear my parents tell me how proud they are of me, I got to take a two hour nap by the river right next to my apartment, for 18 or so fleeting months as an early teenager I got to see the girl I really liked at the time have hearts in her eyes whenever she looked at me even if it ended up meaning nothing, I got to feel the pain in my throat as I inhaled and exhaled after a hard run, I got to cover my face with my hands and sob when the right song came on at the right time, I got to feel how warm the covers could be on a winter night with a roof always over my head. I don’t know if I had to be anything either, because I got all of those moments, I got many more moments than those. I existed, I experienced, sure, I just was. And so many times, it was wonderful, and I wanted to share it, and so I came here, and I wrote about it. I wouldn’t know what else to do. I’d want to share it with you.
After nearly an hour, I’d have all these thoughts, I’d close my laptop, get into bed and close my eyes as I would any other night. Enjoying a few minutes of that familiar cozy feeling as I drifted into no longer being, whatever that even means.
“We'll see creation come undone
These bones that bound us will be gone
We'll stir our spirits 'till we're one
Then soft as shadows we'll become”
Sea of Voices
chaosborne
I don’t care about you, I’m not even supposed to care about you, I found out for myself you hardly cared about me to begin with. I don’t get sad when I think about you, in fact, I don’t even think about you. It’s like you never happened to me anymore. You didn’t even matter. Just a silly first love between two stupid kids who knew nothing about anything, the same story as anyone ever. It’s so generic I hardly remember it even happened nowadays.
It disturbs me that I laugh at the part of you that was my past so easily. That 14 year old with overgrown sideburns and noticeable acne believed in something so strongly, he’d be devastated to know not even that it hurt, but that it amounted to literally nothing. Life was never actually different because I knew you. It’s not even that I wasted my time, it’s that it literally is nothing at all anymore. Sure, in the moment it felt worse when I’d burn up merely seeing your name, and later you posting your boyfriend. I felt ashamed that I felt that way years after you left my life, but now all of that same stimuli does absolutely nothing for me. The face I once thought was beautiful is now just totally average, run of the mill. It’s like I’m not supposed to feel this way about someone who used to mean so much to me, but yet this is exactly where I’m supposed to be with it. It’s been five whole years, I still remember it to the day, yet I hardly remember how you made me feel.
I know everyone was right. I kinda already knew that going in, I’d even reference it. I also don’t like being doubted, it feels like something I have to fight. I wanted to believe in the power of myself and my desire, and wisdom beat it through and through. I don’t like having to tell that kid it was for nothing at all. I’m proud of that dumbass, he’s the one who was capable enough to become who I am. Every part of him that lets him make that mistake are the same parts of him that push him forward. I'm not gonna get rid of that part of him because that him is me.
I don’t wanna be invulnerable, I don’t wanna be numb in fear of pain, I don’t care if I gotta get killed a thousand times. I don’t care if you forget me, I don’t care if I forget you, I care if I forget what it means to trust, love, share. None of that was a mistake, ever. It needed no end result, it was already perfect.
I see exactly what you “loved” about that teenage me, or at least what you should have loved over whatever temporary whims it was you did. He was awkward, he said some embarrassing shit, he was overzealous but goddamn it did that boy believe in the power of what people could be if they let go of the shackles and loved each other. He was all in on that, ride or die. I don’t care if semantically he was “too early”, “naive”, whatever the hell, he was right. You’ve ended up meaning so little to me you didn’t even impact my belief on that. It’s only a mistake when it’s given to someone who doesn’t truly see it, and that’s how it is. I’d even argue it wasn’t his job to see that.
I don’t care about you. I will always care about how I cared about you, because someone else deserves it. There’s a reason 15 year old me laughed when your grandfather said I was nothing, because I already knew better, I already knew I was right where I wanted to be. You didn’t care enough to see it, and I don’t need you too. I did.
The flutter in my chest, the shortness of my breath
My tongue gets tied, my shoulders tense
I die a little death
My mind goes numb, my eyes turn left
My words turn dumb, my ears get red
I die a little death
I just wanna be alive, please let me be alive
The world starts to make less sense, I get conscious of how I dress,
I know my weight should be less, this whole game is just a mess
Every time I realize
I die a little death
I try to be myself and it’s just not it, I can’t be anyone but who I’ve been
Pay the price for my regret, take the punch and suck it in
I die a little death
I just wanna be alive, I can’t just be alive
Spin around, around, around, around
I die a little death
Hear all the sound, feel the hard pound
I die a little death
Bleed out my mouth and put my tongue back in
I die a little death
Feel the aching burn within my ribs
I die, I die a little death
two benjamins
When I was 17, every Sunday, I’d go to a local record store in town, and every so often I’d buy a record. I didn’t even have a record player. It was just cool to go out and buy something without having to ask my parents’ financial information and feeling like I had to justify it for some reason.
For me, that was being an irresponsible teenager, that’s the decision I look back on and shake my head at. I wonder why I was so dumb to buy something I was never gonna use, half of them being bootlegs anyway and of course I didn’t know better. They sit dejected in a box in my closet. All of this guilt over what was probably about $200 in total, the amount I make in less than 2 days worth of part time work now. I have no vices and yet even then I find a place to lecture myself. Sure, for some, that amount decides whether or not they eat, or have power, or pay rent, but it also ends up being nothing in this case. It’s the same amount others spend in a year on coffee, or streaming services, or all these other expenses people in their lives just presume to be default when I don’t even have those habits myself.
“Just be 17”, I’d be told. Every year that adds by one but the message remains the same, but it feels to me like by the time I learn I’ll be too old to have enjoyed its privilege. Just because it’s expected to make mistakes doesn’t mean they should willingly be made. What weighs worse than regret you can’t fix? You don’t learn anything if you’re just stupid to be stupid, by that point my heart would be in the wrong place. At the same time, I know why. Why as a teenager is it even on my mind as to how I’ll perceive my personal freedoms when I’m 40? Is the worry about the concept of the future really worth the weight on my developing shoulders? I’ve got the mentality of an old man and the problems of a child. Thinking through a whole life before I’ve bothered to live at all.
I always feel like such a kid regardless. Younger me thought you were really an adult once you turned 20, current me realizes that isn’t true at all. It’s like I can’t seem to get myself to jump out the nest I’m supposed to leave, when time’ll do it for me regardless. I still dress in graphic tees and basic jeans, horror movies give me major creeps, and I have a childishly innocent pledge to sobriety as though D.A.R.E. actually meant a damn. The adult indulgences seem a.s immature to me as anything and even if I wanted them, I hardly know where I’d even try. Lord knows my silly ass couldn’t seduce a woman if I even wanted to try. I don’t feel like anyone can believe in me to do much of anything still just as if I was 17. My whole concept of accomplishment is purported by the fact I’ve been substantially financially and emotionally supported. The best thing I’ve done that was all me was to write a few pages my grandmas bother to read from time to time.
I get explicitly told I act too old, and I’m constantly implicitly told that I act too young. Perhaps it’s just the voice inside my head, but it comes across as far greater. Two hundred bucks becomes a million when observed five thousand times, but it only costs itself just once. I know I’m being watched. I know every decision I make adding atop each other one by one to create this piece of me is analyzed from the viewpoint of a spectator and not the creator. I hear how others are judged for “just being 17”, or 19, or 25, or 83. It’s never just that simple other than through the eyes of time, the penultimate being. If you care about anything smaller, it will always matter, and I know I will always care. Perhaps these atoms of mine will go on to live in infinite realities and cause an infinite pain, but for just this once, I want it to be right.
If I’m small, I’m innocent forever
An underdog can always be rooted for
Power can’t get to its little head.
Want big dreams and get big things, but be accused of forgetting where you came from
You soon grow old
The day will come, I’ll be left with my hand wide open
Holding up a paradigm
Everything I believed for just a little forward, and a lot of the same
Born to wash ashore
Sand I never learned to love
Thousands of little eroded stones, and a name that will be with them
It’s hard to remember that I’ll one day be forgotten
All this talk of love and war, it all starts to sound like nonsense
Critics and supporters both turn to the same soil
And I won’t have lived the first person to ever have been all right
Maybe the point’s just that I cared
my little hero
Those little moments where you're moved by the world around you.
I wish I could create those
When someone says something you never forget
That little sensation of being impressed watching someone do something you could never even think of
A small moment for pity when someone describes something they experience and it hurts a little because it's true for you too
I see it all the time, and it feels like I’m never a part of it
And maybe I am but it's just so hard to feel so
Exchanging a truth for a lie when I look in the mirror
When I see the veins in my hands and ask who I am
Perhaps this is what love is for
That we may be the most important thing that's ever existed for someone
To have someone who inspires you at every waking turn and brutal tumble
Someone to believe in and from that, believe in yourself
Look into their eyes and into the mirror and say the same “I love you”
Because we can't all be incredible, but we can be great to someone, and that makes this life okay
Eight billion people tripping through days trying to find the path their footprints are making
Some ascend to what might as well be godhood while the grand majority are left with cleft dreams
We can successfully fool ourselves and each other into the beauty that is letting someone so typical be our definition of special, our crown jewel, because it’s something we can call our own, this mark upon the world to leave behind, this reason to have ever been.
The hugs tight enough to hear someone's breath shake
Sentences that need walls broken in order to be spoken
The dumb texts, the stupid friends, the numbing quiet, the sweaty hands
A head on the shoulder, a palm with just as many tiny creases in your hand
I fool myself into thinking it’ll be the easiest thing I’ve ever done and don’t concern myself with it at all
I’ve spent my whole life wanting to be a creator of intentionally unintentional moments, that how I express myself will end up just being the right way.
Even though it's never felt like it's been, but sometimes it is.
I can't be Christ and I can't be crucified, but someone can see Zach and love me as though I'm just as perfect, even if ironically it's in part because I’m not, and I can do the same for someone else.
I just hope it's with each other, not that I have anyone in mind for that, but when I do, I wish that it can line up alright.
When I think of myself as though I were my son, or my brother, or my nephew, or my friend, or even the boyfriend I’ve never been
I see someone far more courageous, lovable, accomplished, yet oblivious and negligent as I see me.
I once shat in diapers and after a little under 20 brief years I feel the need to tackle everything
And that's kinda fucking stupid but it's also quite endearing
There goes my little hero
Bumbling, stumbling, finding it hard to breathe
Trudging forward as though it's the last thing he’ll be
Shoes untied and thousands of stray hairs yet a look in his eyes like he's got a world to beat
Doesn't even know where he's going, never stops to look and see
Fire in his heart and loose screw in his mind
There goes my little hero
May one day he find his place
A bed’s been made, now it’s to be lied in
Experience a peaceful slumber.
Forgot to set "poetry" blocks so the spacing is wrong and I can't seem to update it now. I think for these pieces it ends up working out okay but still not ideal. My apologies.