(no subject)
how can i explain
what i am feeling? what i feel is sadness,
and sadness has no words.
all it has are excuses,
false starts to sentences,
long stares into the distance, thinking:
you should know what i mean.
--
i hear your heart beating so gently, there,
beneath your shirt. you think that i listen
for your heartbeat. i know that i listen
for my comfort.
--
it is better off not asking
the source of this sadness. after all, i do not know.
why do i wake every morning
feeling so ill? i do not know.
neither does the doctor, who prescribes me
tea and pills.
i smoke a little cigarette
in a pliant, hand-rolled paper,
with a little something added
to combat them both.
--
this sadness, i say. this insurmountable sadness. and people turn their heads away, considering their own sadnesses. to each of us, none is so great as our own.
but whatever they are doing to combat it, i have not learned how to do. whatever strength of will, what tool it needs, i do not have.
some write to bleed. i write to clot, to stem the flow that drains me, slowly, of my life. to plug the hole that life itself creates, wearing down the edges, each year a sickly gangrene widening it a little more.
consider the source, the lovemaking, behind our lives. consider the joy with which our births are met. the culmination of an arduous journey. why, then, does this joy fade as we grow up?
if any answer does exist that is not speculation, i am sure the asker keeps it to himself.
what i am feeling? what i feel is sadness,
and sadness has no words.
all it has are excuses,
false starts to sentences,
long stares into the distance, thinking:
you should know what i mean.
--
i hear your heart beating so gently, there,
beneath your shirt. you think that i listen
for your heartbeat. i know that i listen
for my comfort.
--
it is better off not asking
the source of this sadness. after all, i do not know.
why do i wake every morning
feeling so ill? i do not know.
neither does the doctor, who prescribes me
tea and pills.
i smoke a little cigarette
in a pliant, hand-rolled paper,
with a little something added
to combat them both.
--
this sadness, i say. this insurmountable sadness. and people turn their heads away, considering their own sadnesses. to each of us, none is so great as our own.
but whatever they are doing to combat it, i have not learned how to do. whatever strength of will, what tool it needs, i do not have.
some write to bleed. i write to clot, to stem the flow that drains me, slowly, of my life. to plug the hole that life itself creates, wearing down the edges, each year a sickly gangrene widening it a little more.
consider the source, the lovemaking, behind our lives. consider the joy with which our births are met. the culmination of an arduous journey. why, then, does this joy fade as we grow up?
if any answer does exist that is not speculation, i am sure the asker keeps it to himself.