Handshaken

There's something so rewarding
about being more than civil
in a situation where you have the right
(God-given, I might say)
to be much less.
And I pride myself on this fact:
that I was,
so much more than civil,
I'm trying to show good sportsmanship.
After all, to you, this is merely a game.
One thing I'll never know
is how strategic you were
because you never,
not for one second,
let down that guard.
Allow me to say, however,
that you were either
extremely clever
or a single thought never traversed
the empty expanse
of that pretty head.
I gambled harder on you
than I ever have on anyone
and I'm done giving out
second chances and get out of jail free cards
like they're pennies,
or worse: dirt.
Because they're not,
they are so much more,
yet that is how you treated them.
I don't care so much
about the state of my heart,
I knowingly laid that on the line.
But the disrespect
and time you wasted
are insurmountable.
So no more of your
high school glory days bullshit
and no more of your fucking complacency.
I'm tired of megalomania,
so no more.
Molly said it best:
I dealt with more bullshit
than you were worth.
So tonight I shook your hand,
and congratulated you,
after I danced to your music,
listened to you play,
watched you put your arm
around the girl in the red coat.
In that handshake,
a goodbye, a knowing wink,
a 'you got me', an 'I'm out',
and maybe one day, in retrospect,
you'll finally understand what it meant,
a little respect.

tonight i will

Tonight I want to rid my heart of you.
Tonight I want to be done.
Tonight I want to burn every page
that has your name upon it,
and purge every hope and dream
I ever needlessly stowed for you.
You have a whole store room
of wishes spent,
of letters written,
and poems,
all to you,
and tonight I will lock the door
and throw away the key.
Throw it into the river,
so that it will be water under the bridge.
Tonight I'm done,
I will bow out with grace,
I will end it with a handshake
and say 'good game',
because you played so hard
that I'm opting out.
In light of everything,
I can no longer justify this gamble.
And all the reason I used to try
boiled down to stupidity,
and so no more.
Tonight I will not be the fool,
tonight cries for catharsis,
tonight my heart begs to moved forward,
and tonight I will.

hoops, loops and oops.

If only 'twas known
the sheer number of hoops
I have jumped through, of late.
The volume of mental loops and judgmental oops
I pulled after vast excavation
of the bare threads of existence
far outweighs any evidence in your favour,
and I can't decide what that means.
Every road seems a dead end,
every hope a pipe dream,
but even dead ends and pipe dreams are disputable,
right?
I've tried to gently tug at layers
of life-long armour
carefully constucted
to build a fortress,
and what a fortress it has become.
Complete, even, with a moat.
You know what (the ever ambiguous) 'they' say,
if you're going to get wet
you might as well go swimming.
So i did (for I am forever trying and testing what 'they' say),
I dove straight in,
tried to reach the depths,
tried to cross to shore,
tried to lower the drawbridge.
I've heard that there is no try,
there is only do or do not.
Oops.
Yet I am not done,
not now, not yet.
I plan to see my pipe dream
to the very end of my pipe,
will accept a dead end
only at the very deadest of ends.
Now I dutifully tell you
that the end is drawing nigh,
in my own bubbling indifference,
from a bubble too often burst.
There is a chance,
a small sliver of a chance cradled
by the moon,
(because sometimes even the moon
can only take so much waning),
so take it.

Enumeration

I'm sorry if I'm crass.
I'm a hint spiteful on days
when nothing matters.
They come too fast and too frequently
for my taste.

Bitter translates to
bitterish translates to
bitterness translates to
bittered.

(I've been brittle,
breaking,
broken,
barely breathing,
beneath it all,
bruised and
bare.
I've been battered
by debris of a life exploded,
a mind imploded,
a being overloaded.
I've begged.
Pleaded.)

Before it all would I have enumerated
the translations of bitter?

The Way I Feel These Days

If I could describe
the way I feel these days,
I'd say it's something like
a long lost friend,
so lost this friend
is almost a stranger,
knocking on my door.
And the deepest core of me,
some might call it a soul,
rejoices,
revels in the good company,
content and reminiscing.
I invite my friend
to the fireplace,
where we watch the flames dance
and remember what it's like
to feel good,
and we feel good.
We drink and talk away
the night, laugh,
make merry and bask
in the ever-warm glow
of this night.
Everything illuminated
by the gentle flickering
of candles
in the fireplace.
I am warm, calm,
life feels softer
than it has in years,
and it's becoming.
I've decided that I'm
far too good at ambiguity,
but this won't be ambiguous;
I'm touched,
peaceful,
at rest.
Happiness is home.

Twenty

I'm okay with being twenty,
because today I woke up
and I decided that I was twenty.
Time didn't decide,
nor did numbers
or years,
I did.
My birthday is really just incidental.

I call this piece: An All Too Serious Joke

In the ever wise words
of Rilo Kiley,
I'm not my perspective.
I want you to know.
But too often my perspective
is all the world sees,
I become controversial,
a mere symbol of a war waged
between ideologies.
A pawn in the fucking game
of life, represented
by my ideas and my actions.
Actions speak louder than words
but you can't understand my actions
without hearing my words.
A perfect catch-22
where without conversation
my actions become meaningless,
or unintelligible:
clay to be molded by any artist
into exactly what they desire.
Fantastic, but that's not me.
Just so you know,
I'm not my perspective.
I'm growing tired of endlessly
justifying myself
to those who miss the point.
I'm sick of running in circles
with people, watching them try
to catch their own tails,
and to what end?
(That's a joke.)
So much for dialectic materialism,
sorry Hegel, Marx and Feuerbach.
The world really is
going to the dogs.
(That's another joke.)
If a synthesis is so unattainable
what about the philosophy
of live and let live,
is that still too impossible?
I know you may believe in god,
but I'm not interested
in your spiritual warfare.
If we're going to argue or talk
let's talk or argue for the sake
of logic and truth,
not for the sake
of saving my soul.
I'm done convincing people
that I'm not a bad person,
that I'm well-intentioned,
mostly because I shouldn't have to.
I won't adhere to "objective" guidelines,
because no such thing exists,
and simply arguing that fact
is enough of a demonstration
in it's favour.
So yes, let's talk,
but only if we'll make progress,
because the world is full
of enough bullshit already.