The Poetry Marathon

Deciding which day will be the tricky part. Friday’s no good because you’d be opening up a can of worms you’d never be able to close.

Sunday is a no-go because it already has an abysmal reputation.

Wednesday is a terrible choice because it offers a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak existence and showers you in the gratification you so desperately crave.

Monday won’t work on account of the fact that it’s too predictable.

Thursday doesn’t feel right either because you just can’t ascertain the true purpose and, as such, feel powerless to stop the unrelenting forces from grounding you in realism.

Tuesday just can’t exist because no one has yet to see it leaping around in the wild. It may as well be a sasquatch or the loch ness monster.

And Saturday would be perfect but now you have the entire weekend to look forward to and isn’t that just the pits? This is why you wanted to try it in the first place.

I greet darkness as an old acquaintance while its shadows

dance around me as if pretending to know me for who I was. Those cobblestone roads permeate

every aspect of your essence. When the light accosts your very being, it’s time for the night to take its final bow.

Through the shadows, I witnessed the atrocities of everyday life: people conceding to the worst in themselves as they pretend their perceptions are somehow superior to countless centuries of human(e) existence. Those who cannot see watch us with judgement engrossing their skin and those who cannot hear listen to the sounds of silence coupled with the silent anguish of the millions of injustices beneath the surface of your own denial.

Your words can metastasize to levels not seen since the world tried to inhibit your own sense of freedom. I looked up at the subway walls and all that stared back at me was the warnings of those who failed the past to ensure a better future. Most won’t listen to the prophets because they can’t admit they were wrong

but we know you’ll never be able to improve until you’ve made peace with all the ways you’ve lost sight of yourself over the countless decades of moral ambiguity.

It lives on as an existential temptation, a veritable itch you dare not scratch.

The fear of the unknown permeates deeper than you’ll ever understand.

It offers nothing in the way of absolution; it just feeds on your own

insecurities and transgressions. Yet it offers a way out, a glittering

spark of hope for those who can see beyond their own self-doubt

and narrow scope of existence. It’s always in sight and yet it

remains unreachable through all its notoriety.

Worship what you can’t see and let me

know where that takes you. Ambivalence

will only get you so far.

Let go of what you’ve already lost.

Why is that so difficult for some of us?

I want to be mr. fahrenheit, invert the world and see it for what

it truly is. ecstasy won’t be your companion unless you let it.

I want to come alive but worry I’ll accidentally ignite the sky

and have no idea how to extinguish it. Perhaps that’s a

problem for another night.

It seems as if it would be fun to have around. Frankly, I’ve always been a bit more fixated on

my license to live. It was gifted to me as a child and I couldn’t comprehend its full value until the pretrichor filled my lungs to the brim and engulfed me in its shadow.

I wanted to destroy it. It’s still intact but not for lack of trying. Somehow, it has withstood countless attempts on its life and remains a good sport through it all.

I understand now why the sunlight engrosses me through its own rays of optimism as it simultaneously shrouds me in darkness. I look down at it and keep it on hand at all times.

“Wait for me to grow up and appreciate what I’ve yet to lose”

We dove through the depths when everything else seemed lost. Even when you feel lost

to the stars, existentialism never gives up on you. I stare the reaper in the face and

feel his own insecurities firing back at me. He’s powerless to break me when he

knows nothing of his own fruitless circumstances. Even when we fight back

against the darkness, we make our own mortality feel unencumbered.

For all the times we’ve scream endlessly into the abyss, we need to

feel the ramifications of detaching from our essence. only then will

the rest of existence come into focus.

It’s all you can think about when your own existence passes by in the blink of an eye.

We struggled for so long with how to make it before we realized we already did.

The view’s never pretty but, through it all, it never decayed from its original form.

Yet we progress within ourselves and await a rectified existence tomorrow.

As if it were the only thing that could make us improved in the eyes of

humanity.

Memory is subject to gradation in the worst way possible. Sometimes, we all miss the way we weren’t: pickup soccer games during lunch, ferris wheels descending into the night, philanthropic endeavors outside a waffle house.

We check every last box and still somehow feel empty inside. In retrospect, it’s not about what you do but who you do it with. We’ll paint the town a bright beautiful shade of sienna and leave it to its own devices.

We may not know where we’re going in this starship but that’s never stopped us before and I’ll be damned if it’s going to have any power to stop us now.

We could be apart for the rest of existence and our brotherly bond

would never waver in the slightest. If I had built a best friend in a laboratory,

it would have been impossible for him to come out any better than you (also, i imagine ms. shelley would be beaming with pride from above). wherever your path takes you,

whatever may become of you,

i’ll always be right beside you if not in one way, shape or form, then certainly another.

at your nuptials, i’ll be front and center, at the delivery of your offspring, right there in the waiting room and, at your retirement party, all other congratulatory paroxysms will pale in comparison to mine.

i love you, man, and wish you the best. you deserve it.

They say it’s the limit despite its existence being an old wive’s tale. It’s always

in view yet perpetually unreachable. I don’t know why you’d ever need gardening tools

up there but i guess that’s the point. There’s nothing holding you back and yet

there’s no way forward. I can work around anything if I try hard enough. Maybe I could be a moonraker,

cleaning the ground as if it mattered, working my way through one obfuscation after another.

In any case, my own path will be decided in ways beyond anyone’s comprehension. Perhaps that’s the biggest reward of them all.