This morning’s sunrise was a tacky and artificial affair.
The sun was played by a weak, 12-watt, refrigerator bulb
that looked wet and heavy as it struggled uphill like a drunk.
The horizon reminded me of a cheap, runny theatrical illusion,
the clouds were old cotton ***** glued to cardboard silhouettes,
the birds sagged like dead puppets from uneven coat hanger wires.

I don’t miss you. Everything’s fine. I hardly noticed you were gone, actually.
Things here are a laugh and a half. We’re doing fun girl things. Anna got new shoes.
I’m hardened by years of inescapable, solitary, covid lockdown. I’m immune to despair.
So go off, interview for that new, far-flung PhD life. Go fawn over Elon Musk for all I care.
I’m definitely not in my room eating spoons of peanut butter and crying to Tom Waits songs.

I sat there in the wooden office chair
My boss sits across from me
A dark wooden desk sits between us

Outside the window
The buzzing of drones serving the queen
Thoughtlessly focused on their tasks

My boss snaps me back
Another warning on my “productivity”
Maybe this time I’ll shape up

Bees leave to find flowers
But they are never far from the hive
They are shackled with a purpose to the whole

I sit in my car just before leaving for home
My wrists and neck stiff from another day's worth of tasks
I’ll be back here tomorrow
And the next day

How do you decide?
Decide what to do,
What the future holds for you?
I don’t understand, one goal,
One goal that somehow
Supersedes them all.

How do you choose?
When passion flows through you,
For not just one, nor two,
But many life paths, careers,
It all means something to you?

I feel lost, thinking of the future.
I’m floating by, trying to find,
Something that could spark
More than mere interest,
Something that could captivate,
Hypnotize me for long enough.

Because you see, I flit from one
Passion to the next, one minute
I am drawing, the next sewing,
The next it’s animals I love,
Or how about teaching children?

And I sit here empty, not sure
Which path to take, which goal
To make, to work towards,
Because right now, I’m in
The inbetween, no job,
Not in school, what do I do?

But the reality is, I’m trying to find
That one magic passion,
That somehow works with my
Disable body, since almost everything,
I find it all exhausting.
And my mind is spinning circles,
A dog chasing its tail.

Why can’t I do it all?
Why can’t I just enjoy life, enjoy
All of the things it brings,
And take my time, because I’m
So tired, of trying to figure it all out.
Tired of planning, I’ve never been
Too good at planning, when there’s
So many things occupying my mind,
So many things that I desire.

But even then, even then, if I could find
A goal to work towards, a dream job
For right now, well that takes work
And it takes time, because it
Turns out it’s all a ladder that
We all have to climb and being disabled,
Well I feel left behind, not sure
How to move forward when
I also have to go up, and going
Up has always been so draining.

I must work now, to somehow
Get somewhere I would rather be,
But what do you do when most jobs
Require me to be on my feet,
With my level of experience,
And education, limiting me?
It’s like I have to hurt myself
In order to hopefully some day,
Live a better life, I guess that’s why
So many say, ‘suffer now, and
You’ll get your reward later’

I tried university, tried college,
But you see, being disabled,
Has made them  difficult for me.
At least, in the ways that I was pursuing.
And now I’m stuck, trying to find my way,
How to get out of this rut, this mess,
All around me while being limited
By my own body, when I’m so used
To trying so hard to keep up
With the rest of them, charging
At how much money they can earn.

Money, it always comes back to money.
And money stresses me out,
Makes me more sick, gives me more
Pain that I would ever like to be in.
Well, apparently, money is
Supposed to be the solution.

Not so easy when the job market is crap,
I didn’t come from money, so I had to
Start off with nothing, and make my own way.
But where do you start, when
All your ‘now’ prospects seem
Rather lackluster and all you can do
Is prepare for a future.

Strange to think that we’re told to
Live each and every day like
It’s the last one we may ever live,
When we have to spend our beginnings
Stuck in preparing, deciding, and striving
For a future, so hard to make,
When all you started with was
A journal to write in.

I just want to live now,
I want to live everyday,
I want to spend more time
Cultivating all this passion inside
Of me, it’s bursting inside of me.

But there’s this rut, this anxiety,
This fear, of having to build a life,
No, a career. So that I can live
In the future, instead of now,
So that hopefully, we can get by,
Scrape by, by the skins of our teeth.

Tired of working crap jobs,
That I don’t really like, where we’re
Unappreciated, and paid to barely live.
Overworked, underpaid, I’m in so much pain.
My body, can’t stand in this pain,
But that’s all I can do is stand.
In pain, at a cash register,
Or making drinks, no consideration,
Of the struggle it is of being disabled.

Because we all have to able.
Able to stand, to push, to work
Your ***** off, until there’s nothing left,
You’ve given all you’ve got, and then
Some. Soul *******, career bent,
Work too hard, to fit in.
You got to be a workaholic to fit in.

Well I can’t keep up with that pace,
And I see it wearing people thin,
People that have more strength,
More drive than I ever did.
How are we supposed to live,
When you have to work to live,
And, in turn, live to work.
It’s extremely exhausting.

All of this jumbles inside me,
I can’t breathe, can’t decide,
How I’m supposed to live my life
When everything screams
On all sides, that I’m supposed to be
Running, supposed to be rushing,
And that all seems so wrong.

I just want to live a life that has meaning.
Something meaningful to me, that I can
Actually enjoy each moment as it passes
Us all by, I don’t want to rush life
Before it all ends, I’m so tired
Of trying to run in this ‘rat race’
It’s not a race, I need a slower pace.
I demand a slower place.
No more running, no more racing,
It’s time to live in the now,
No fear.

I hate what it is doing to us
The closer we get the hotter it becomes
The top of the mountain
Where freedom is promised
Continues to grow taller
While the path that leads us burns at our feet

I could drink it all away
But the path grabbed the bottle from my hand
It was my commitment
And yours too
We were friends because of the path
And now we can’t even talk about it

There is nothing left between us
They killed it with money
I love you as a brother
But the enterprise wins again
Like it always does
Because businessmen are not farmers

We felt the connection between us
The words and the music
And our fathers who were made in heaven
I can only speak to you in a dream now
Because you are as afraid as I am
We gave them our souls

Impatient fosters stand,

    Awaiting for their boy turned man.
Their face an oasis of emotion,

His the same-
      Simply gilded in rock facade, no notion.


Implanted in societal grasp,
      No care today, could barely rasp.

Thoughtful vernacular struck me quite,
      Made me realize,
What I'm doing is right.

At age 8* my teacher would ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up, so I told her a fashion model.
She laughed and wrote it on the board.

At age 9 I wanted to be a doctor along with half of my class.

At age 10 I wanted to be a teacher, they all told me it takes a lot of education and I would have to work hard in order to get there.

at age 11 I wanted to be an artist, they told me to pick something more realistic so I said a singer.
They said to stop playing games and choose a job.

at age 12 I was pretty hooked on the idea of a singer, so I sang
And I sang
And I sang
Until I believed that I was good enough to be famous.

at age 13 I was so confident about my singing
Until I heard their voices.
Most of the girls in my choir were reaching the high notes and their tones were so clear.
I gave up on that dream.
I knew I wouldn't be like them.
So I began poetry.
This was the year I wrote my first poem "nobody cares".
I showed it to a few really close friends and my sister.
They said it was really good, it got them emotionally and that was what I was aiming for.
At first the poem was about 2 pages long but I cut it shorter every time I showed it people because they told me what parts didn't make sense to them.
I took it as a way to improve my poem.
So then I started posting it on quotev, and tumblr, and now hellopoetry.
I wasn't expecting anybody to like it.
I continued poetry and now it comes to me so easily, I can write poems like I'm writing my own name.

at age 14 I told my teacher I wanted to be a poet and he told me that
"I needed to improve"
At age 14 I didn't know what I wanted to be.
Nothing was good enough
Nothing was realistic enough
Nobody gave me enough support to go with my dreams.
At age 14 I decided that I wanted multiple jobs.
I still haven't told anyone because I already know what they're going to say.

There is
an immense freedom
in not having
a career to protect.

  ~ mce