it's tempting sometimes.
the impulse to withdraw all the money from my bank account
and drive down I70 until the scenery changes,
the impulse to wander without bothering to find anything
let alone myself.
the impulse to disappear.
but impulses are just impulses,
i think this is just the way my mind convulses
and, obviously, i can't do any of those things.
or maybe i just feel like i can't do any of those things.
i mean, i've got responsibilities i've got people counting on me.  
i can't just up and leave my life
even though sometimes i'm itching to like i've got poison ivy
crawling all over my skin.
speaking of poison, i've heard people theorize that
maybe oxygen is slow-acting poison, taking all of our lives
to **** us under the guise of "natural causes"
i think if you stay anywhere long enough
the air becomes polluted, the air gets toxic.
my highschool art teacher,
who was incidentally a real conspiracy theory kind of guy,
once told our class that we're all too locked into our realities.
that life is only what we perceive it.
i had snickered along with the rest of the class,
the rest of the unwilling congregation to his soapbox pulpit,
because that's what people do when they're uncomfortable.
now i guess i wish i was a little less locked into my own reality.
i guess i wish i could be the kind of person
who bought plane one-way plane tickets and could be reckless
without first getting tangled in the repercussions.
i think the problem with running is
that no matter where i ran i'd still be me.
most people tie their feet to the train tracks of inevitability,
they will build a house there until it falls down around them.
they will live there until they're evicted,
with their hands still clenched in the sheets
and their feet planted in the backyard.
most people never leave where they grew roots.
but, see, the problem with roots is that unless you want to die
you can't ever pull them out completely.
i am always going to be from somewhere.
i am always going to be from here.
i am always going to be myself.
but life is a work in progress and i'm ******* working on it,
i'm not where i want to be
but as long as i know where i've been,
i don’t ever have to go back to where i was again.
my head is so crowded that sometimes i think it's exceeding its occupancy.
i think that i'm going to start having to get rid
of pieces of myself to make everything fit.
sometimes i just want to lose all my thoughts along the interstate
like i lose them halfway through a poem
i'm not quick enough to write down.
my head is like a graveyard with good ideas
buried under cracked tombstones that no one leaves flowers on.
sometimes i think of my brain as a black hole,
a place where light gets lost and doesn't come back out the same.
sometimes i think of my brain as a moratorium,
a place where dreams go
to get dressed for their funeral processions.
but sometimes i think of my brain as midas,
any idea can be golden if i get my hands on it.
sometimes i just want to hold my coalmine heart so tightly
that all that's left is diamonds.
the thing is, sometimes my brain is a like a black hole
and sometimes my brain is like a galaxy.
on my good days i'm golden, on my bad days i'm falling apart
and i lose a couple more more of my pieces every time i hit the ground.
but it's all internal; i think if i were to self-destruct
it wouldn't even make a sound.
and so often i think of the world as a battlefield,
i think i was born in the trenches instead of the home front.
i think i found myself in the worst place to get lost.
we went to bed as children
and woke up with the world on our shoulders
we went to bed as innocent and woke up as soldiers.
and you can't save people from themselves,
even though we've spent the last few millennia trying to.
we're like that sometimes, we never learn.
and even when i was drowning six feet under gasping for air,
you never needed to save me from myself,
my shadow is more than just the reflection of somebody else.
so go on, get your armor
so go on, get your battle scars
so take aim, so don't be ashamed
it's uphill sometimes but i kind of think we're getting there,
even if i don't always know where is.
sometimes you don't sink or swim,
you just thrash around until you start floating
our life jackets are all labeled "here's to hoping, here's to coping"
so **** your horoscopes.
you only listen to it when it tells you what you want to hear anyways.
so don't go to bed, kid, stay wide awake.
it's better for dreaming, it's better for scheming.
nobody is going to hand you your destiny,
you've got to ******* fight for it.
and we're all learning how to open our eyes
when we get pulled under by the tide and lick the salt off our teeth.
and if you're searching for purpose,
for something that might be worth this,
i can tell you where not to look.
kid, i've been there.
**** it, most days i still am there.
i built a house out of deflated life preservers there
and was surprised when it didn't float me home.
but this is what i know now:
i know i have a choice in how i look at this world.
am i going to focus on the brutal or the beautiful?
because for all the ugly there is so much that’s still lovely,
so don't let this ******* of a world steal your bright eyes,
cutting your eyelashes down to size.
don't let this ******* of a world tell you to settle for anything.
and when they tell you about icarus like a warning sign,
ask them "what good is a cautionary tale that doesn't **** up?"