To be a lawyer is not a difficult pursuit,
To be an astrophysicist
is not a complex occupation.
To be an actor,
To be a general,
To be a professor of the most mesmerizing numbers,
of the most perplexing and alien symbols...
Is not confusing in the least.

For with the right ambition
and a mind with but simple intuition,
Nearly anything is within our reach.

But there is something that is not so simple.

We can put men living men in the heavens
and map the deepest trenches under the propellers of our ships.
And although we can replace a liver
and syphon off entire rivers
A cloudy clump of confusion sits upstairs...
Lying in the dusty attic with a chain woven through
the rafters 7 billion times.


A courageous cacophony of credence and passion
That physically sits just behind our eyeballs
in a wrinkly gray sack that laughs at us
every time we try and break that chain that keeps
our eyes fixed forward.
Fixed far away from the very source of soul that makes
sense to no one but ourselves.

If writing was a drug
I'd have a frequent-flyer card
at the rehab clinic.

The nurses would all know my street address
my middle name
and the way I take my tea.

I would have scribbles on the inside of my elbows
ink stains in my lungs,
and little letters hanging from my nose hairs

I would bribe the nurses
to sneak me pens and paper in the middle of the night,
My thoughts would be sewn in ink across my body,
and I'd have pre-ordered my tombstone to read:
"Here lies an addict"

But thank god writing isn't a drug.
Because if it was
I'd have died a long time ago.