I sit here

drinking cup

after cup

of coffee.

Nobody wants to hear me

I don’t even want to hear myself

Nobody understands me

I think that’s the greatest truth

or

Nobody cares to understand me.

Perhaps, that’s what a writer is…

someone trying to be understood

in the simplest terms

and most writers use metaphors—impossible language—they are the fakers of their art.

If I were to write a simple sentence

maybe they would know?

I think about drinking

most days

Not because it’s something productive to do

but because, it would be a method for giving up

without quitting.

People, don’t know the source of their drinking

the average drunk will tell you, “They are happy.”

Maybe, their meaning in life is gotten

from drinking

the next bottle.

I listen to most people

and I think about drinking.

Addictions

simplify our lives—they narrow, who we are, until we are totally selfish.

Our worries become less and less

as we become less and less

and it doesn’t matter, if we are sitting on a beach

looking at the waves, waiting for Armageddon.

I feel like I’m waiting

in a sea of unhappy people.

As I persist, in life

I suffer more, like a runner

at mile 22.

If we have expectations

we gradually meet each new moment, with disappointment.

Life doesn’t become easier.

If we are dreamers, we have to wake-up

over and over again.

As we become perfected, we shed our scales

and see the world, for what it really is.

To keep looking, and not to dull the pain

is to experience what life is.

To abandon prejudice

is to see our humanity in others.

The dream, is an addiction—something perfect and something simple to live for.

True life can never measure up to it

and I find myself living with lies that I don’t have answers for.

If I tell myself, I want a perfect woman

it is easy to be rejected by that bitch

or to stop seeing that good girl.

I have enough

and

I have things in my life that I might lose

but there is nothing I can’t live without—

even my own life—losing it, is small

compared to my big dreams

that I lose, over and over again.

Dreams, I need. I can’t live without them.

I am willing to die for them, but harder still—is the personal truth I carry with me

I am willing to live

for my dreams,

and living is hard.

Each year, I find myself adjusting what I do

as life doesn’t work out, the way I want it to

I slave for my existence

that teaches me

about reality.

There are many flowers being sold on Mother’s Day

and most of them, are ugly

and that’s not what a flower is supposed to be.

It would be better, not to give, an ugly flower to my mother

because the absence of ugliness, is better than an ugly gift.

It’s the thought that counts, right?

Wrong.

She might smile and say “thank you”

but it’s the same smile a girl gives, when she wants to be polite.

Women won’t admit they do this

and it’s only when the guy shakes her shoulders and screams, “Why?”

that she pulls out her pepper spray and screams “Rape!”

How many guys are crazy?

That’s how the store sells their ugly flowers—

or

People like me, spend all of their money

just to buy something beautiful

that she might like.

That’s how I feel about my life—

People settle

and think

they’re doing well.

It’s an addiction.

I want to know where I stand.

It hurts to know where I stand.

I’m totally sober.