It’s shift change,
and pit stains
paint my blue shirt.

My feet hurt,
and I’m ready to leave work,
but the teenage party ****
doesn’t come in,
so of course I
am not leaving,
just grieving
my lost evening
freedom.

Sixteen-hour anxiety,
cause I almost O.D.
on carbonated caffeine,
as the sugar and acid
eat away
causing
painful tooth decay.

Make it home and hope to
get enough sleep to
make it through
my next shift.

Unload those greasy clothes
onto my bathroom floor
before I change into
my holy t-shirt and
ripped up shorts.
Don’t even make it to the shower
cause I am out in less than
a quarter of an hour
after I enter the front door.

In again, wash, and repeat,
I know this isn’t me.
I could do so much more.

Boss yells get your times down!
Fix this order!
Stop lounging,
if you got time to lean,
ya got time to clean.”

My co-workers only see
another cog
in the fast-food machine.
Even when I’m not clowning,
I am still a joke to them.

So, tired but it’s not just
sleep that I need.
So, burnt out that
I just want to up and leave,
but I’m twenty-three
and it won’t be
till I am twenty-eight
that I get free,
running off to another city
to get a higher degree
and escape this restaurant
barely get paid
minimum wage
nightmare.

It's not that I hate you
It's I hate the way it all played out

I hate that I felt used
I hate that I had felt hope

I hate that you ruined everyone else for me

I hate that I can't love someone that same way I loved you

Like the world was gonna crash down around me without your kiss

I hate that you still make me rethink every choice I make

Is it morally sound
Is it logical
Will I regret it right after

You did so much damage
Even during the parts you weren't even in my life

The emptiness of not having you then made me do so many bad things

The absolute dread of the day to day without you use to drive me crazy

That's one thing that's improved
I  know how to live without you

I know how to miss you and not love you

I know how to hate you and not hate you all at once

You're the start to my story
Even if it was already in the middle

On a good or bad day
there is almost nothing
I have to do or say.

I get to wake up
and shake up
my world view
as I observe
all the strange
things you do.

I get to go to work
but if I choose
not to do
that
then I can loose
my decent paycheck.

I could hurt myself
or try to be better.
I could communicate
or be incommunicado
and stay embittered.

I don’t have to be nice,
but if I want to brighten
my own and someone
else life
then I can try.

In fact the only thing
that is not up to me
is that I
do not have immortality.
Eventually, I will die
not matter how hard I try.

Behold the marvelous mystic mind
that divines the truth behind
those enemy lines.

Look closer to the bolder beholder,
at the one poet who told her mother
not to trust her father,
that serpentine swine who dined
on mankind’s wasted time.

Here is another poet with his artistic wit
intertwined with the fine wine
of philosophical and scientific
observations he made fit with
a halfway decent rhyme scheme.

Now, I present with perfect present tense
the ultimate meaning of all of it,
no more flowery prose
ready or not here goes
my genius,

Behold……
oh crap. I forgot it.

The greatest form of wisdom
is external and internal compassion,
knowing that though others
need forgiving
some of that blessing
should be invested
in oneself.

To be present in the moment
feeling the sweet enjoyment
of how we live,
not fretting over the past
or dreading what is coming next.

So, I smile and stand polite,
enjoy the quiet night,
cause anything can go wrong
just as anything can go right.