Time passes slowly
like **** in an hourglass
sitting watching hours pass
while no one knows me
in my internalized identity crisis
my multiple identities fight this
feeling of being lonely
I’m with all the people I’m not with
this is my fallacious fantasy’s gift
I can hear myself groaning
like a zombie foraging in the mist
I blindly eat what’s in my fists
in the distance lights are glowing
but all I see are tiny dots
in an electrical gridlock
my definition of recently keeps growing
as the rest of my life keeps shrinking
it’s hard to keep going
this deep into sinking.

Apathy, oh dear apathy
How I suffered slowly
Heart so lonely
Even safe in their arms
Your coldest embrace
Hides my tear-stained face
Save me from the shell
From the nothing I have become

Dear apathy, dear apathy
My heart rings lowly
An echoless bell,
A great empty shell,
Ever trapped in the greatest of hells

Why you come to me I do not know
For you cover my soul and call it home
Shelter me from the rain in my head
Even when I wake from my shivering bed

There is no more dread
There is no more pain
Not sorrow nor aching
Only nothing again
Nothing but numb
What have I become?
What have I...become?

Dear apathy
Even when I should be happily
Joyously so
You refuse to go
Oh the great things that you know…

Dear apathy, dearest apathy
My heart, it suffered slowly
Until you came to me
Took me into your embrace
You shelter my tear-stained face
From all of this disgrace
That has become me…
Whatever am I to be,
With or without you
My dearest apathy?

My dearest apathy
I suffered so slowly
Heartstrings, tear and fray
For indescribable reasons I stay
Even whilst they play
Ever so lowly

There is no echo, no ring or sound
There is no song, no feeling at all
There is no care, not a bit in the world
For I have given all I have to give
In this great life that I live
I give and I give…
Until I can no more
Until I can no more
My heart opens the door…
It opens the door
Welcoming you into my coldest embrace

Dear apathy, you came for me
When I needed you most
I was but your host,
A wailing ghost
Until you came to me…
Now my greatest emotions
The vastest of oceans
They rest, now
They leave me be…
Since you have come to me
They leave me be…

Dear apathy, dear apathy…
These times you come to me
Shelter me, hold me to be
Lulled into your coldest of arms
Silence the alarms
Out with the candle
Out with me…
And welcome, dearest apathy

- Jay M
October 11th, 2021

pink
kimono
opens
slowly

out toward the west
last vestiges of day light
slowly reclined

The path ahead is unclear
the first few steps seem fine
(as fine is redefined by times)
beyond is cowled in green gloom
with definition hidden
but enticing

We pause and breathe
ask feet to tentatively tread possibilities
for surer surface

The line ascribed
by timeless river run
seems safe
and the possibility of kingfishers
is a draw indeed

But we have seen these river banks
lost to inundation
and irresistible weight

To realise this too late
would be fatal

so we collaborate in waiting
and make the call