Imagine a treadmill
for your brain.
That never stops
speeding up.
Slowly, at first,
you savor each step.
But boredom pushes you
faster and faster.
No longer tasting.
Only inhaling
the adrenaline.
Because unless you find the next page,
the next post,
the next video,
you risk facing
the combined gravity
of reality
converging upon a single point
of agony.
And so you scroll.
To keep stress away,
the roaring anxiety at bay.

When you ask:
Who am I looking for
in a companion?
Most people say
they want love.
Or care.
Or comfort.
I want someone
who thinks me clever.
Who gets my jokes.
Who feels the romantic word
like a caress,
phrasing, like a gentle kiss.
Who deems me special
like I've always wanted to be.
Because I need me to see
that I love me,
just not unconditionally.

Me: What's so hard about the first line?
Also Me: There's nothing difficult at all! It's just like baking a cake.
M: In what way, would you say, this is at all like baking a cake?
A M: Cakes, in a way, are a composition. They can come in a variety of flavors, from mundane munchies to extravagant favors.
M: You comic, that's pretty much everything in life; are you hoping to seem as if somehow you're wise?
A M: Before the first pour, a whisk or a spoon or something more, one must consider intention, constitution, and culinary inspiration.
M: it's a cake, that you bake, where the flour is the base, sugar the taste, and colors meant to decorate.
A M: No need to simplify, I ask that you rectify your pompous pontification.
Myself: writing, baking, what does it matter. We write, we bake, that's all that matters.

I was told
in grade school
that diamonds are made of coal,
that
immense
immeasurable pressure alone
would give us
what we want.

What if
my lattice structure
the inner composition of my being
was imperfect?
Would I not collapse
my core rupture
and my remains combust
leaving behind nothing
to remember
my existence?

I heard
that the way these jewels are polished
was to throw them into a vessel
with a thousand little pebbles
to grind the the surfaces smooth.

The layers
eroded away,
do they mean nothing?
Are they inconsequential?
A burden
to our respective existence?

I believed
that I was someone special,
hidden gem in the rough
all I have to do is trust
that I can be anything.

Now I know
that I may not be
out of the ordinary.
That I can not be anything
I want to be.
I can dream
I can achieve
I can discover
I can live,
but of all the things in the world
I cannot be
a diamond.

Train tracks, notebooks, bridges, buildings,
and a billion other things
in nature, you will rarely find
yet to us, they, order bring.

If they're really so common place
from windows to honey bees.
why does my heart so awfully ache
the great distance now I see.

For basic math does specify
that lines with exact same slopes
in either directions you try
meet not, no matter the hope.

Valleys, mountains, forest of trees,
no distance is quite so far
but what to do, if geometry
quietly keeps us apart?

Now I realize that fate and time
do often travel in lines.
our future, I may never find,
and for that my soul does cry.

Will it be simple accident,
Or depend on God's great wrath?
For now, I will traverse to find
a perpendicular path.

I have been once before this told
that the true meaning of insane
was to repeat any result
and not have expected the same

and despite all that here i am
with my head in shock and shambles
too fast, too soon, in love again
so much for learning from gambles

whatever i was meant to be
mature or yet another farce
oh torture and its parities
i fear i must with reason part

shall i long for proximity
or pine for needy attention
become nuisance implicitly
face certain, solemn rejection

or should i now hope not at all
bury myself in burning pain
of misery henceforth recall
and enter a state of insane?

i am not a blithering fool
i know that lasting love takes time
that feelings like rain drops will pool
that mind and heart slowly align

yet of no matter what i think
trying truly to go to bed
i know i will not sleep a wink
because you're stuck inside my head

People are always curious about why I’m a cynic. There is never a reason to be; a cynic doubts without reservation. Though in some sense a follower of pragmatism, one sees so little. There is no beauty in the world, because all beauty is a construct of perception. I’ve been cynical for long enough (I hope) that I can speak for my version.
It’s simple.
Step 1) Take a critic.
Step 2) Define them: someone who prioritizes the flaws above any other characteristics in a subject matter.
Step 3) Put them through hours of mental torture and sadness.
Step 4) Shoot them in the foot for no apparent reason.
Congratulations, you have successfully evolved a critic into a cynic.
To all the people who have been a victim of my cynicism, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to impress my own misfortunes upon you, I just got rejected. I hope you understand.