My thoughts don't escape me
They seek me
I avoid and they follow
I dip and they dive
Always over my shoulder

I've lost a train of thought, sure
But it always finds me
A high speed train
A runaway train
At the most inconvenient of times.

When do I control the thoughts
And the thoughts don't control me??
For such a mighty being…
It's a pretty weak display.
My thoughts tell me who I am.

But they aren't who I am
Mere fragments
(I beg someone to tell them that)
Moments in time passed
Past. Not Present.

When they come back though
…I must relive the moment
No matter how much I protest
They do not obey my requests
It's pointless.

Live in the moment
Embrace the now
Tactics of a desperate soul
All in vain
But they paint the picture

A picture that doesn’t belong to me
A picture that shows me
Or how I see me
And the colors are all off
It's so out of focus.

Focus seems to be the whole issue
I'm always on the inside
Sifting through strings of words,
Flashes of optics, pockets of sound,
Just trying to make sense of it all

Thoughts are altered upon each retrieval
Emotions invade unwelcome
Uninvited, they plant in the memory
It's altered. For the worse
The picture is shadowed once more

"That isn't me."
But it is, isn't it?
Or it was.
WAS.
I can handle "was".

"Is" constitutes different territory
I am proud of me
I am ashamed of me
I live every emotion about me
I'm not given a choice

I am given a choice..
As to who I will be
?Not who I was.
Not who I am.
But who will I be?