leaves bleed in the water
a small sip to check if it's
pleasing to taste
leave the cup alone
as I apply for jobs

Here I am 5 years later.

I’m asleep but I dream about the stress of a job that I dreamed of years prior. I cry over a job that I once cried in passion for. I think about the job just as much as I did those years ago, but for different reasons.

Today is an exact reflection of what you were thinking five years ago, someone said to me. It was all a thought you had five years ago. It made me happy, yes- emotional, too. But I wonder how much of that emotion was indeed for my accomplishments in that time frame. Did I feel unsettled, like I had seen the accumulation of five years of seemingly wasted efforts?

But I love my job, I tell myself. This is who you were meant to be, others tell me.

Do I exaggerate as I write this? Surely.
but that small voice I’ve been burying seems to be finding some confidence as of late. Or maybe it has always been there, just growing concerned for me?

It’s okay, I’ll figure it out.

How long do we get?
How many can we fit inside?
I reply like it's the first time
Gotta take pride

Have my ******* jokes
It makes them laugh
"Mind you're rowlocks" when you step inside lad's.
Watch out for the crocodiles, they escaped from the zoo.
Just over the side
If you need the loo.

Lookout for the terrapins
I can tell you think it's a joke
But it's true
Don't believe me?
I'll show a picture to you

Where did they come from?
During the winter, where do they go?
Never answer
"I don't know"

I've held many positions
From the bottom to the top
Some good
Some bad
They kept me a float
But never been happier
Helping people, inside a boat

Many hats on my head,
Many titles to claim,
I find it fulfilling to be,
Everything that motivates me.

One day I’m a fireman,
Another day I am a jailer,
This day I’m a poet,
Tomorrow I’ll be a mailer.

What’s funny is this,
A name and a shield,
Is merely a buck for a meal,
My ignorance is so bliss.

These paths are not me,
They are merely a guide,
For me to find whomever is me,
On a security guard’s salary.

To make films or to weep,
To keep jails or to sleep,
To fight fires or to leap,
Into this pen of little sheep.

Why is it that I,
Aim to be that guy,
Who’s career should imply,
That I’m “something” till I die?

An artist,
An actor,
An experiment of all factors,
I try hard to be somebody,
When I’m already my own everybody.

I’m exactly what I need to be,
In this world of all these faces,
Masks grow tight around these cheeks,
Why aspire to climb mountains,
And reach such heightening places?

I’m a detective one day,
An electrician by night,
A silly little dreamer,
Always ready to take on flight.

I’ll pilot this aircraft,
And spread my wings a’sailing,
Without prejudice or hesitation,
I may not always succeed,
But I’m never failing.

A loser is someone who wakes up to an alarm
& drives to a place they hate doing things around people they hate
for multiple hours a day
to only make a pittance and live a sub standard life after the fact.
It's better to withdraw;
I've been the loser countless times before, but you can't lose at something you don't even choose to engage in

& They made it easy
when doing nothing feels like a revolutionary act
I no longer care what happens
1,000,000 years of human evolution & survival & they have us
so afraid

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

I want this life to read like an intricate novel. I don’t want to keep sitting at a computer all day while the romance of life slips through my arthritic fingers. They are meant to write beautiful prose that flow over our souls and cover them with golden warmth.

Yet they are tippy-tappy typing away at exhausting, unimaginative emails with signatures like “warmest regards” to cover how calloused my heart has become.

Sitting in this comfortable space behind a giant screen where nothing can hurt me is crippling.  We were meant to embrace the love this earth holds us in. We are supposed to bathe in rivers, meet strangers in different cities, and learn to fall. My knees should have scrapes, my elbows bruised from stumbles I take on dirt roads and motorbikes.

While my bones are intact, my life is what is breaking.

Agitation, despair and its winged variations, you name it
all repressed but still rise to test me

What is my recourse?
I tread lightly on this Escheresque concourse
It’s repeated often, I know
but the pen and keys are my most cathartic release
they’re magma to emerging flames
they’re sedatives for demons and angels alike
that reside on corners of this clavicle

How many steps could you take through my lens, my concave mirror?
Have you felt what I felt?
The brimming, cerebral cauldron bursting, putting volcanic geysers to shame
the questions outnumbering seconds spent since Earth’s nativity
the emotions ripping a rift through which rationality deep dives
it becomes Phelps in unknown depths
your body becomes both a Vatican and a Colosseum,
place of worship and place of war
and you walk the tightropes your vocal chords have morphed into
careful to seem like another replica, don’t wanna upset the blades they all balance on
don’t wanna scare the rest hollow, no,
best to follow and best to follow the regimen:

coffee beans and spice of delusion in the hazelnut syrup,
sip slow
follow the same cycle because change is a cocoon and cocoons ache like the past
keep on pretending to love the workplace
love the norms held over you
puppet strings bring warmth after all
in this solitary world cold as winter missile silos
and just as destructive

So I ask again, have you felt what I felt?

Do the few days in utopia offset the majority on rodent wheels?
Have you risen so high, to satellite peaks, to the best you’ve ever been
only to have the worst waiting on the coin’s parallel?

We flip like saltwater fins and backstroke till a back is left broke
I’m learning to discard hope but breathe in the alternative
I believe in better days, I will carve them from local stone
and build a home upon their surfaces
I now know paradise is a set of blueprints
happiness is no state of mind, it’s a direction to me
you may not notice when you arrive
but you keep going

and that’s the beauty of it
you let it be the wind
It’ll find you on your journey

Tell me again,
have you felt what I felt?