JKase Poetry #2 — stress poetry
Do you ever want the world to fall apart
so you don’t have to?
Do you ever want the world to totally break down
so you don’t have to explain why you did too?
Sometimes my life feels claustrophobic
it feels too small, too constrained
I want to stretch or do something else
sometimes
the only thing stopping me from having a breakdown
is knowing I’ll have to clean up afterward
Wind rushes over the cattails
brushing everything
but leaving few impressions
At another time of year
I’d be almost underwater
Only adds to my repression
The grass is bent by blowing air
I observe
as though I am unmoved
Sometimes the world needs to just stop
and let me take a break
I need a moment to collect myself,
pick up all the broken pieces
and dropped balls
and lost threads
and breathe
The Moment and the Void
What will it mean
in 40 years
that we gave up quiet
peace and reflection
That we distracted ourselves
with pretty lights
every day
for most of our lives?
How many masterpieces
will never be created
how much trauma papered over
humanity never experienced
life never lived
I want to be myself
I need time to do it
I want my conversations
to be more than half-remembered
headlines, memes, and hot takes
I want to think my own thoughts
own my behaviour
hold to my real values
But I can’t do any of that
more like a program
than a person
outputting my inputs
returning values
according to an external algorithm
Being human gives me the opportunity
to generate, to experience, to be
in a way no one else gets to
I’ve been wasting it every day
just to please my brain
stave off the moment.
this moment and the void
participation in my own life
for one more second
Allowing my future to happen to me
without shaping my participation in it
covering my past to it can’t
breathe
heal
shape me.
I am static.
Barely changing.
My stances on issues just an amalgam of all the parts of all the takes I’ve heard that happen to stick.
If I heard about someone living like this I’d feel bad
sympathetic. Get this man some help.
But I’m living it.
It me.
I am that man
and I want to hide it
listen to even smarter podcasts
follow even obscurer bands
play up even the smallest moments of humanity like I’m not frantically throwing up
a façade of personhood
All it would take
is to put my phone away more
sleep, eat, and exercise right
use my free time to be creative
be present with my family
honest with my friends
effective at work
But my brain needs another hit.
Could you just hang on a sec?
I want to see if Bilmuri posted anything new.
(have you heard of them?)
Last night I played guitar and sang some songs
I felt in my mind
the effervescent release of real emotions
for the first time
in forever.
It’s interesting that the byproduct
of our stressful modern lives
is that the only thing we ever really feel
is anger
How primal is that?
