i tell myself im feeling better.
no social media
no outside distractions
just me and my mind.

ive made quite a few changes in these seemingly eternal summer months
ive changed my diet
changed my thinking
my sleep schedule
my hobbies and interests
even my wardrobe.

ive made all these changes
ive gotten out of my head (for the most part)
so if ive made all these changes and if im doing all of these new and better things
why do i still feel so low ?

i feel low not as in sad
no sad is too simple, too cliche, too blase
i feel low as in my heart will start to clench and struggle to beat
my breathing gets shallow
my thoughts are dulled and become sullen and narrow
like im on the verge of a never arriving panic attack

so tell me if im filled with no responsibilities no standards to hold myself to
filled with a sense of freedom and "peace" as many would say
how come if you asked me to today
i still couldnt put my so called peace on a scale of 1 to 10 ?

I stare at my work begrudgingly
Because it has something I want
Potential

If my work were my child
It’d be the middle one
In between my perfectionism, the elder
And my self-loathing, the younger

I phone up inspiration
To help with the troublesome kid
But she never returns my calls anymore

Motivation, I haven’t spoken to in ages
She left when my insecurities
Got the better of me
Said I’d become a pathetic husk of a man

Look at me
I don’t even have the energy to rhyme
Better toss this one on the pile
With the rest of them

What’s the pile, you ask?
It’s where I keep all my
No-effort narratives
Forgotten frivolities
Miserable musings
Worthless writings
Inadequate ideas
Laughable lines
Soulless stories
Cold chapters
Terrible titles
Bad books
Garbage

The pile is large
And it only gets larger
As time progresses
Because the quality
of something I write
Quickly regresses

I don’t do well in small places
Claustrophobia of the mind
Cause my mind is vast as space is
Yet space is hard to find

I sometimes wield the pen in spite
Of why I am convinced I write
The poetic words that I spill

Spill like a glass of water
That’s been stirred to overflow
By my feelings and thoughts or so
I have gotten to know
The will of the flow
The direction that it wants to go
That’s what po-
etry is all about, no?

Because poem starts
with a P for personal
Not popular
Or populous
Not for the people who prefer prying
Pickpocketing or playful plying
In the placid plains inside
It’s for the persons who pray
To the poet’s plight

To go out on an odyssey,
with an O, the second letter
Not omniscient
Or omnipotent
For oscillating with your own
Is only for ones once overthrown
By an onslaught of hydrogen per-oxide
Those ostracized and odd
Off, yet open to the outside

E is the third letter
And it stands for emotional
Or extorted
until emptiness
Extended
after the excavation had ended
and emotion was evacuated ere
The embodiment of ecstasy
Had been enterred here

Lastly M stands for me!
Me, myself and I!
Not the masses who maim
My mind and meticulously aim
For the mark on my midbrain
Just the men and wo-men who make do
With musing about the mechanisms of
Mother Earth and her miracles too

Poetry is a gift
Out with it to be at ease
Especially for yourself
May it help you find peace