I remember
Sitting outside college lecture halls,
Penning pretentious poems.

I wrote about princesses in towers,
Abstract visions,
Conjured fantasies,
Layers upon layers
Of bullshit

I was afraid to say
What I really felt,
In the way
That I really felt it.

Back then,
Enslaved by emotions,
Impotent Anger,
Fervid Jealousy,
Unrequited Love,
Intense obsessions,
I wanted the whole world,
And I could have none of it.

As the years passed,
I scratched, I clawed,
And I carved out little slivers of life
Wherever I called home.

The intensity mellowed out,
The pretense dissolved,
I cleaned up the bullshit,
Or it was just
Beaten out of me.

But My little slivers of life
Were deemed inadequate
And invalid.

They told me about
All the things I didn’t have,
And all the things I hadn’t done.

So I held my little slivers tightly against my chest,
And went back to the world
Of warped fantasies.
Yet again I was enslaved, impotent, and fervid.

The love,
Yet again unrequited
The obsessions,
Yet more intense.

The world in my dreams
Now desolate and barren,
The landscape scorched,
The ground sowed with salt.

And I sit here,
Halfway across the world,
Poeting my thoughts.
Unpretentious, raw, vulnerable,
Not wanting to care,
Not able to stop

Everything is just
All too real
There’s such a finality,
An invisible deadline,
For an invisible assignment,
That’s woefully incomplete.

No more re-rolls of the dice,
No more mulligans,
And I’m back,
Right where I was,
When I sat outside lecture halls,
Penning pretentious poems.