Every dreary day's the same.
Every important detail is halted
in a stalemate over a somewhen
that feels much like eternity.

I remember it all by heart,
my laughable fortress of apathy:
the texture of the chair,
the length of the motion
between my hand and my addiction
in the form of keyboard and mouse,
the brightness of fake mechanical dreams,
and the mess of real ones.

Then the line between evening and night blurs
or sometimes night and day,
and comes the tedious unrewarding process
of laying in bed, and listening
to all the little pains
of human body and mind:
little scratches, aches,
and too many thoughts.

Thoughts about
all the little things
that make me insufferably like myself:
my ego, wishing only to cage the world.
and make it dance like a fool,
conversing with despair,
an extravagant fellow
who sees no world
outside of mechanical fools
staged on a collapsing surface.

There are also social thoughts
about the game theory, hormones, and stress
of playing in human society.
People connected by fragile threads.
Loneliness is a paradox,
as it tends to grow with density.
It’s always hard to find
the ideal strategy.

I also remember well
the feeling of waking up.
I would have never known
how passionately one could hate
a series of fragmented sound bites saying:
"The time is 7:30 am. The time is-", I know.
Of course, you can’t know that I know,
or rather you just can’t know,
but it feels like you should by now, y’know??


After a period of time
equal parts instant and unending
I find myself strapped
to yet another, less comfortable chair.
There are a few dozen others
sitting in equally uncomfortable chairs
in equally inexpressive fashion.

At an opposite angle,
stands a bigger one
relaying piles of data
to be computed and organized
and tediously rehearsed,
by us, smaller calculators in training.
The most exciting
and unfun part
of our structural data training
are the tests
to check each one’s margin of error
and kindly give particularly special care
to the ones on the lower end
of achievement.

Sometimes one of the bigger ones
asks me if I’m fine
what a stupidly kind but pointless question.
Because, of course,
there’s only one correct answer
So I make a clueless face
and give the same one every time
I want to be a good calculator, after all.

But it’s far too obvious
to even bother saying
that nothing is ever fine
maybe that’s why no one does say it
and when I remember
the depth of my unfineness
my center of gravity sinks
deep into the earth
and all that’s left is the feeling
of my soul digesting itself,
and in those lucid moments
when the game of reality ceases
and nothing can be good or bad
and life becomes
too sad a story to handle
I can’t help but smile.