Socially stupid
My pure intentions are useless
I’m a good friend frozen still
Struck silent by a fear of being a nuisance

I understand if you don’t want me around
I don’t know what to say
Or when to say it
I don’t know how to act
Or when to laugh

I just know that we could help each other
I wanna grow with you
I get emotional thinking of all the beautiful things we could do
But I’m a ******* loser
And you’re just to cool

I don’t want to seem too desperate
To eager to get close to you
I just miss how we used to laugh
I miss how we used to scream at the night
Singing and spinning until we were half asleep

Socially stupid
Cordially illiterate
Friendship-less

Whatever it was
That once drew words from
A tempest of a mind
Is missing now.

Whatever it was
That animated my withering hands
With dancerly motion
Has taken flight.

What did I have
That sifted through chaos
And spoke with power
Through my juvenile lips.
Power with which my grown voice
Could not conjure except
In a moment’s horror.

Skill generated from the lust of a fire
Stoked by unpredictability,
Fed by creative superiority complex.

I can look back at my adolescence with shame
And disgust.
I can tell myself
How much wiser I am now.
But that lustful child,
That frail beast
Could soak a page in pain
In ways I struggle to mimic.

I was erupting with language,
Bursting at the seams with monologue,
Overcome by soliloquy.
Now I am a mute stage hand
Calling for my line.

Must I once again take the spotlight
For an audience of self judgment
To prove to myself
That I am capable of putting on
A written performance worth reading?

Let this be my audition.
I will move myself to a standing ovation.

I know it's wrong
To carry on like this.
But now that I have seen you again,
In ways that were too intricate
For me to unwind as a child,
And the love that i've come to know mundanely well
Is few and far,
I can't seem to keep you at arms length.
Because my arms are selfish
And my self-denial is anything but denial.

Maybe it's just a symptom of this pandemic.
My isolation has always
Brought me back to you.
And it could be wrong.
I could be leading you to the pyre,
Following blindly with a torch in hand.

Are you willing to be a martyr
For my narcissism?
A sacrifice to my selfish indulgence
Of another's attention?
But I know your blindness,
Your readiness to burn with a smile
As long as I lit the fire.

You're worth more than my oscillating indecisiveness.
You're a steady pillar
Holding up my contingency plans.
When will you crumble
And let me face the world
With true uncertainty?

As long as I have you,
I will always have something to be certain of.

That blue ridge has vanished.
Not even a sketch of it can be discerned
Out of the white mask it wears.

Behind that mask
Beyond the ridge
I turned into a woman.
I replaced my identity
And decided that I was not a vessel of pain
Or a naive child.

I decided to be intelligence
Kindness
Bravery
And ambition.

Splash.
The lure breaks the water.
He jigs and reels.
Nothing.

What I wouldn't give
To have seen that bridge burn
To feel the radiating heat
Just barely scorching my skin
To know how far away the glow could be seen.

I wonder if my own burning radiates.
I wonder if my still glowing embers
Can be heard crackling.
Or if, like the bridge,
All the incendiary evidence of my youth
Crumbled into the water
And washed into the not so distant sea.

The mask is clearing
And subtle blue emerges.
Will I wait to see it bare its face?
I don't think so.

The flat river stretches out in front of me
And splits cleanly into a deep blue grey ridge,
The top of which is frayed and spiked with tree tops.
Across the reflective, jittery water
Houses dot the banks.
They are white, red,
All bearing a facade reminiscent of the founding of this town.
Massive swaths of earth
Are carved out of the hillside behind them,
It must be a quarry
But I can't be sure.

I drench my senses in this waterscape,
Remembering its past I never lived
And fearing its future that I will most likely
Have the displeasure of witnessing.

Silence breaks as the fisherman,
Whose bow eclipses the concrete embankment to my right,
Takes a call from his vessel.
He is instructing someone on how to assemble some structure
With screws and washers.

I return to my observations.
Blue and white clouds have dropped over
That distant, fractal topped ridge.
It's warm for March but cold for April.
I look up from my writing and suddenly
The blue ridge,
The blue clouds,
And the blue water all appear a shade darker
Than they were the last time I raised my eyes and listened.

He's hung up.
It's time to go.

On my way back,
I remember that it's easier to describe
What's tangible
Than that which is nebulous
And further clouded by an unattended to mind.
I begin to cry and forgive myself.

My obsession began when I was a child.
Maybe it arose from a curiosity about the past,
My resolution that I would never be satisfied with a normal life.

Because what do we remember?
Not the mundane,
Not the simple,
And not the typical.

History has showed me what we all find to be valuable,
And its not a desk job
A suburban townhouse
Or some dissociative pursuit of a vague happiness.

It values
Struggle,
Beauty,
Revolution,
Creation,
Exploration.

I will refuse to become forgettable.
But I feel like I'm running out of time to become anything else.
What a waste of a mind and body to do nothing of significance.
But it's true, my mind and body are weak.

But I'm trying to drag myself onto this stage
In hopes of giving a performance to remember.

i haven't posted anything in almost three years

i'm sorry.

i'm trying really hard.

but maybe im lying when i say that.

maybe im just pretending that what made me write before is still somewhere inside me.

it could be that the snake ive been trying to charm is dead.

no sweet melody can make it rise from its resting place inside me.

maybe i should put my flute down.