Reset

 Now is the time
For the world to remember
What it has longed 
To forget.

Now is the moment
When we must accept
That we are ephemeral.

Now is the moment
When we must let go
Of the past,
And embrace the world to come.

I want to believe
That there's a new world
Beyond the light
Engulfing my soul.

I want to believe
That the future is as bright
As the visions I see in my mind.

I want to believe 
That when I'm finally ready,
I can shape the future 
Into something worthy
Of existing.

For now,
Though,
However much it hurts.
I must say goodbye. 

Because now is the moment
My heart must accept
That tomorrow will not arrive. 

The End of My World

 It's been months since the moment
That I left home for good,
Since I was taken by people
Who ignored what I said.
I told them when asked,
"One day you'll regret this."
But they acted as though I was out of line.

It's been months since my brain
Knew the world as I knew it
Would end without fanfare or joy.
I'd hoped we could stay
For time and all eternity,
But plainly I knew nothing at all. 

It's been better and worse
Since I expected it to be,
Things have happened to shape me
In ways I couldn't predict. 
I still long for all
That I had to leave behind,
But there's no going back now.

Does the world regret sending me here?
I don't know, and at this point I don't care. 
I'm happy here now,
Or happy enough, at least.
I will make this place
Into a world I can live in.
If there's no way to move on
But to let go of all I loved,
I guess I can learn
To accept this as my home. 

Neighbors Across the Way

Oh neighbors across the way,
You have something I don't have.
If I had it,
I've no doubt I'd be as happy
As you seem to be
When I picture you
In my mind's eye.
I can't see in your window,
But there's something about you
That draws me to you 
As though I were a child in a toy store.

The Edifice of "Why"

 I sort through the things
I've collected through the years,
Mementos to a time
I've tried to forget.
As I prepare to leave
The Utopia I built,
I can't help but ask
"Why?"

"Why" is the edifice
Growing in my heart,
A wall I crash into 
With each passing day.
Why is the question
I ask every second,
Every moment,
Every breath.

The house is cleaner
Then it's ever been,
The yard is free of weeds
And the living room free of junk.
Soon memories of a life lived
Will be gone,
And I'll be off somewhere worse
Then where I am right now.

Why do I have no control
Over my life and my dreams?
Why doesn't the world heed me
When I say I can't do this?
Why is there a wall
Growing deep in my soul?

Brick by brick,
Day by day,
I feel the edifice growing within me,
A prison that I now live in by choice.
Only the windows let me know 
Of the world outside,
A world that I'm trying to forget.
People walk past me,
Free of fear and worry,
Free of the nightmare 
I can't seem to wake up from.

Why is the edifice
Growing in my heart?
Why can't I pass the wall
Between me and my future?
Why am I trapped
In a memory I hate,
In a world that I long to escape from?

A Utopia On Paper

 I remember when the world was perfect.

There was a magazine stand
At the community center
I go to a lot, 
Though nowhere near as 
Often as I used to.
It hasn't been there in years,
Perhaps a decade
Or more,
But I remember when it was there.
It was a time when thoughts
Belonged in print
And when people 
Could be seen
In more ways than one.
It was a time when progress
Wasn't hampering humanity.

Back in the days
When the magazine stand was there,
The internet was still young.
You didn’t have always online games,
Only small distractions
From a life you had to return to.
It was perfect.
You had a day to day life
You suffered through,
On the promise that eventually
You could return
To the world that accepted you
Because it didn't know you any other way. 
Two worlds set each other off,
Neither one quite enough,
Yet together they could live in harmony.

When they took away the magazine stand,
I didn't miss it.
Not really.
I'd never bought anything there
And it's not as if you couldn't find anything
They sold
Online.
The internet had rendered so much
Obsolete,
And we took it for granted
That this was what progress looked like.
A utopia,
Where scarce resources stayed in the ground
And people had more space for other
More meaningful things.
A utopia on paper
That when put in practice
Quickly proved to be more flimsy
Than the material it was printed on. 

My Small Creations

 My small creations
Do not know they exist in my mind only.
They walk about their lives,
Unaware that they are temporary
And doomed to repeat 
Until I'm satisfied 
With their lives.

My small creations
Do not know they were made to be
Friends and enemies.
There are no background characters
And no one who would be forgotten 
If you never saw them again.
All of them are important
To me,
It's only each other that they can't stand.

My small creations
Do not know that I forget them constantly.
They have vanished and returned
Time and again, 
And I'm not sure how many times it's happened.
I only know that sometimes I see
A face in the crowd and think,
"Have I seen you somewhere before?"

My small creations
Don't realize their unimportance.
They're world lives in me
And me alone.
No one else knows the truth
About their creation 
Or destruction.
One day I will die
And they will turn to dust,
No one knowing their names and backstories.
But for now,
While the sun still shines
And the Earth still turns,
They are everything to me. 

A Stopped Clock

 I've always believed
That time would stop
The day before disaster. 
I always believed 
That horror would happen
On my own terms.
My tiny mind
And insignificant self
Couldn't imagine a world
Where everyone but me
Was ready to move on.

I always thought 
That everyone saw
What I see.
I always thought 
That everyone knew
What I knew.
I always thought 
That when the time came
To move forward,
They'd ask me first.

Now I stand on a precipice.
My old world is gone,
And I can't get it back.
All I have is the memory
Of yesterday,
A place I can never return to.
Someday I'll fall into nothingness,
My soul washed away by time,
But until then
I'll keep waiting
For the stopped clock
To begin once more. 

Finality

 There's only so much time
Before the world ends
And everything you know
Ceases to exist.
There's only so much time
Before you're forgotten,
Never to be remembered.
Too much time.
Enough time 
To screw up
And become someone
You thought you didn't want to be.

Zero

 The concept of nothing.
The idea that you exist
Only here and now.
The notion 
That somewhere between now
And eternity
Is a space where something else could go.

We invented this idea
So many times.
The idea that there is a space
Where a number should go
But no real number to fill it.
Things go backward 
And forward,
But how do you show
That they're staying the same?

How do you demonstrate
The absence of something?

It is said that to reach 
This magical place,
We had to divide by infinity
And get rid of whatever we were holding onto.
But if that's the case, 
Than why can't you do the inverse
To get everything you could possibly want? 

Recurrence

 There's something comforting 
About knowing
That we're doomed to repeat history.
There's something nice
About knowing
That you'll find something familiar
About the world you're in,
Even if you're in the far future.
There's something nice
About knowing
Who you are,
But that's only because
You know that you're doomed to be stuck here.

An endless cycle 
Of death and destruction,
Decay and resurrection,
Ending,
Beginning,
Loss
And creation.
This is the past,
Present
And future,
A thing we cannot escape,
Something we can't unlearn,
A part of physics
That we can't seem to change.

How to escape the endless recurrence,
How to stop the endless denial,
How to recreate physics
So that we're not doomed to behave like planets
Instead of people.

History repeats,
We're doomed to forget,
Reality comes undone
And yet we still find something comforting
About knowing that tomorrow will come
No matter what. 

Sunlight

 Sunlight
Used to be good.

Once there was a time when sunlight
Meant warmth and protection,
Flowers and trees,
Water to splash in
And grass to play on.

Not that long ago
Sunlight
Meant a world that was safe.

Now sunlight
Means fire and destruction,
Mountains of ash,
Ages of emptiness.

Sunlight
Made us better,
Until we overcame 
Our limitations. 

Now sunlight
Means that we stand
Under a ball of flame,
Burning us to death. 

The House of Entitlement

 Somewhere in the world 
There's a person who has everything. 
Everything a person
Could possibly want. 
You know that person
And you want to be that person,
But something, most likely money,
Is keeping you from becoming that person. 
So lacking the brains to make greatness
Or the social skills to monetize it, 
You steal the world 
Of those above you. 
You steal their home,
Their family, 
Their very existence,
In the name of saying that you're the best.
No one in the real world knows of this theft.
Only those who share your brain know 
What has happened. 

This is the Last Resort.
No one who lives here
Has their own home.
Everyone lives
At the behest of someone 
They believe to be better than them.
Now that you have chosen
Your place of existence,
Who you are and what you do
Is now known to the world. 
The person you are now
Is someone you run from,
While the person you stole
Is who you wish you could be. 

Endless Acquisition

 What happens when you have everything you could possibly need or want?
Why, you come up with new things to want,
Things you didn't even think of
Just a few days ago. 
Things that won't make you happy,
They just make you feel 
Like you have something to live for. 
Nobody wants to be perfect,
Yet all of us strive
For perfection.

So what happens when we reach 
The apex of our lives?
We live in a world 
Where that will never happen. 
Because our world was built by people
Who were already born rich
And can't imagine the lives
Those around them live.
Our world was built by those 
Doomed to decline
Unless they stole everything.
In an attempt to avoid this,
They built a house filled with everything
Except hope. 

So now that you find yourself at the top,
You can't help but stare
At the world around you,
A world you know will never be yours,
And you can't help but wonder,
Why do I need all of this stuff? 

Gods Among Men

 They were Gods among men.
They stood so that the men of the world could see and worship them.
They stood so the world
Would know who they were
And what they represented.
They stood so that they would be seen by all
And worshipped by none.

They spoke so that they would be heard
By the human race.
They spoke so that their story would be passed down
To the future,
A world they would not live to see.
They spoke to a world
Full of people like them, 
A world they thought they understood. 

They prayed to those above them
So that knowledge might flow into them
Like a river to the ocean.
They prayed that the world would shape itself
Around them and their needs.
They prayed so that the fabric of spacetime
Would unravel itself,
And humanity would crown them kings. 

The world circled endlessly,
Always coming back
To them and their demands.
The world did not see them,
But the human race did. 
These Gods among men
Wanted one thing only;
To be human.
A thing they already had.
Yet we kept giving it to them.
Until the day came that we forgot
That we would never be Gods ourselves. 

A Chocolate Bar

 Who cares about Orangutans?
They live so far away
And they don't even speak English.
Who cares if they suffer
From the loss of the forest?
All I care about 
Is the awful day at work I had.
I know this chocolate bar
Is full of evil,
But it's the only thing 
That I have to look forward to. 

My entire life is full
Of a million crimes
Unpunished by any law.
I know that I'm wrong
And I know that I'll suffer
When I'm sent to the afterlife,
But I have fifty years left
Before I have to worry about that.

What I try not to think about
Are the people around me
Doing the same things.
A coffee at Starbucks,
A food order from DoorDash,
An article in a newspaper feigning shock
Over the assassination of United Health Care's CEO.
All of us trying
To get through a day
Pretending that nothing's wrong.
All of us trying
To forget the damage we've done
And what will come to us 
Because of it.  

But I'm not a CEO
Or a journalist at a large newspaper.
I'm not someone who runs the world.
I'm just a person
Trying to get through their day.
Doesn't that mean that I should be spared? 

A Perfect You

Look in the mirror
And imagine that you
Are the most beautiful,
Intelligent,
And Charismatic person
You know.

Picture a person

Like you in every way

Except where you want to be different.

Picture the person

You wish with all your heart

That you could be.

Look in the mirror

And imagine the other life

You wish you could lead.

Now imagine the people you would know,

The friends you would have,

The people who live next door.

Imagine the people

At your perfect job.

Imagine the family

In your perfect house.

Imagine the life you could lead

In a place such as this;

A place so perfect 

You will never leave

No matter how much 

You need to. 

Welcome

To the Last Resort. 

Blackout

 Now is the winter of our discontent

Or so a great bard once said.

 

Cold winds blow 

Trees down 

Upon the houses

Of this doomed street,

Isolated in a city 

That believes itself to be great.

Darkness engulfs the citizens.

Warmth gives way to cold. 

Light becomes a sacred gift

Too precious to be squandered.

We will survive.

Light will return.

They wish us to suffer

In silent.

But we haven't forgotten

The debt that they still owe us.

Someday we'll collect

And then they'll all be sorry. 

Condemnation

 I sit in solitude
As a river flows down from the sky,
Flooding the world with ideas and stories. 
I sit and watch
As the world rushes past me
In a torrent, 
Leaving me with nothing
But a valley too young
To be green. 

I sit in solitude
Waiting
For opportunities 
That I was never promised,
For things that I was explicitly told would never be mine.
I sit and wait
For the moment the world realizes
That I'm watching it,
Waiting for what I know it won't give me.

I sit in solitude
And stare into the future, 
To the place where I'll go when I die.
I sit waiting 
For condemnation,
For the moment when the world finally admits
That I will never be able to live in it
Peacefully. 

I sit in solitude,
For I long for the gift
Of entitlement 
And jealousy. 
I sit trapped
In an empty room
Packed high with junk
That no one else wanted,
Because the world won't allow me
To become desperate 
And angry. 

The future has changed
And soon we will all be condemned 
To live without anything more
Than absolute necessity, 
Doomed never to dream about a life
Where there's too much to want
And too little to appreciate. 

So we all sit in solitude,
Separated from each other
Not by distance
But by the sense that if we got too close
We would vaporize each other,
And the sense that if we look at each other
All we'll see is ourselves. 

I Don't Want to Know

 The older I get,
The more my world fails me
Inside and out.
Things I took for granted
Vanish into thin air,
Leaving nothing but lies in their place.

The older I get, 
The more science tells me
I need to be wary
And prepared for disaster.
It turns out that's code
For giving up 
Everything that makes life good.

The older I get,
The more I find
That I don't want to know
Just what's wrong 
With me 
Or the world at large.
I want to live the fantasy life
Of someone too stupid
To see how much they're failing.
Someone who will never know
That the world fell apart
Because of neglect
And sabotage. 

I should want to know,
I should want to do the right thing,
I should want to believe
That the truth will set me free,
But I know nothing. 

All I know
Is that the older I get
The more it feels like ignorance
Is bliss. 

Survival of the Fittest

 "Every man for himself."

That's what they'll say
When they look back on this moment.
No certainty or belief,
Only a sense of desperation.
"Every man for himself",
An archaic term
From a time long gone,
Words that deny the validity 
Of half of the human race. 
What better words could be said
Of a moment 
Such as this? 

Right and wrong,
Good and bad,
There has to be an answer
That won't kill us in our sleep.
There have to be words
That won't bring forth nature
In the worst form it takes.
No love,
No community,
Only survival of the fittest,
The ones who were chosen,

They will say,
To carry on the human race.

"Every man for himself."
That's how the fascists talk
When they get on their platforms
Of cruelty and greed.
"Every man should help himself
To the spoils of war."
No thought for the needy,
No love for the destitute, 
Only a desire
For destruction
And chaos.

They sound so certain.
They speak as though 
They know something we don't.
Is it any wonder
That we've turned out to be
Just like them?

"Every man for himself.
Let our world be turned over
To the will of nature
And the needs of the many over the few."

The few will rule over us.
It is they who will decide
Who lives and who dies. 
Nobody but them thinks
That they should be in charge.
Nobody thinks this is fair. 

"Every man for himself."
They say,
"Except us.
Don't abandon us
In our hour of need. 
Without you,
We'd die.
We need you.
Please don't leave us
To suffer our fate.
Please don't let the chaos
Of the Infinite
Devour us whole."