Every morning, I wake up and tell myself to seize the day, and every evening, I'm still where I started: happiest when daydreaming, worst when living.
So I'm trying to write this out, as if it will help.
To write from the heart, or straight from the mind, as they say, but my fingertips and realm of feelings don't always connect to one another.
But here it is, How I Feel:
It's like an itching beneath my skin,
one I can't scratch unless
I peel it off and claw at veins.
It's a pain in the chest, that doesn't lift.
It's a restless sleep, half awake, half not.
It feels disgusting inside, like I'm tangled, mangled up.
It all feels disconnected. Like this Is Not Real.
Like the wires to reality have been severed.
It's the Big Cliche.
What can I do to make my feelings original?
I'm just smiling on the outside, to make it up to you,
to pretend, again, but I hold two conversations
simultaneously, one in my head
and another with you.
It feels like I can't move.
But I do and I don't want to.
There's a world out there,
but I'd rather be in my head, but maybe it's that which makes it all worse.
And yet going out only makes me feel more useless.
Look, how I've descended into whines and plain language. I guess this mind's just not poetic enough to make these feelings look pretty.
The problem is is that the problem doesn't go away.
It won't get better because I keep scratching at it,
it's out of my control because it will inevitably happen, there is nothing that will make it go away.
That double is. It's ugly. But how do I operate on language and make it work my way?
But these are excuses, everyone else's and mine too. Just stop worrying, as soon as you get on with it,
it will be over.
Smile, it might never happen.
(It has.) (It will.)
Yet here is the Problem, the Contradiction.
I don't know what I want.
It's wandering aimlessly, looking for approval and appreciation that I can't take when it's given. Everything feels tacky, everything feels bad.
Life's like a gift shop.
It only looked good when I was seven.
It's like being crowded, when nobody's near.
Don't touch me, don't talk.
I'm making monsters from all the bad I can find.
I'm running from the things I've made with my own hand.
I could explain, but take it as you will.
(Can you guess?)
(I bet you can.)
And these are just images I've described so many times before.
But they're the ones that stick like worn out phrases in conversations.
Dead metaphors.
It's like itching, like mosquitoes
have landed beneath my skin and are eating me alive.
I'm torn between wishing today was over or hoping it will stay to put off tommorrow. Just go with it, I try to tell myself and nothing happens.
Kind of experimented with this by writing at different times, in different moods. Not my best work, but I need to get back into writing poetry.