My secret hobby is posting poems and the like in anonymous places, and letting them effervesce into nothingness. But this one’s kinda long and I kinda like it, so I’ll keep it here. It was posted as a rant on CL, I took it down now. Got some real heartfelt responses. I use Icarus instead of Theonetruebrian for these things, a reference to being free, flying too high, drowning and all that.
What’s cathartic is knowing these things are effervescent, destined to fade away into obscurity. Like drawing on the first blank page of a sketchbook, and leaving it on a subway with a note to do the same. Maybe somewhere, some stranger got something out of it, and that’s kinda like chatroulette with telepathy. Some ineffable feeling, unraveled from my being into a series of words that, without the reader already knowing such feelings, would be about like eating a menu. Anything to feel a connection, no matter how faint, I suppose:
Dying, without you.
Slowly, right before my eyes, I’m fading away. Closer to whence I came, returned to the source of the everlasting Other. Same as you. And there is nothing I can do about it. My destruction in the physical form is inevitable.
I want someone who recognizes that. Someone who sees that this world is fleeting, that no amount of faith or hope will save you from the fact that you are going to die. Not so long from now. And even if you floated off to heaven under a tunnel of light, you wouldn’t be you. You’d be some perfect version, or boiled down archetype, or a whole other person, awoken to the part of you you’d left behind when you decided to venture to this god forsaken place.
Give me someone who sees the fleeting nature of things, the inherent limits and illusions of subjective reality, and the fact that we are the destroyer and the sufferer, the engineers and the slaves. Give me someone who sees that because of this we are fucked, and entitled to nothing, a confused and pitiful populace of poetic parasites, devoted to dominion.
Find me someone who sees these things, who feels the anguish and the pain and the frailty of it all, and drinks it in without going mad. Give me someone who sees these things not as proof that there is no hope, but as proof that hope is everything. Evidence that life is indeed precious, and valuable, and worth living. That people ARE cruel, and they ARE liars, and they ARE betrayers. But people are also kind, they are imaginative and funny, wholesome and innocent, so very very worth knowing. Some of the time, if not most, those people are the same. Conditions being as they may, we are all lovers and killers, both the oppressors and the voices of liberation.
Give me someone who sees a hundred strikes of lightning, and is not reminded only of the fleeting nature of this world, but also how that nature makes life so precious. So ineffable is this feeling, my soul sinks even attempting to portray it. My only hope, that you might already know this feeling. That you might already have a word, or some story that touched you, some memory of friends lost or lovers gained that makes you feel the pain instead as joy. A song in your heart that sings you to sleep when the weight of the world turns that alarm clock into your warden, your TV into your cellmate. Makes you whole when you are broken so badly, you’ve almost given up.
Maybe you have someone. God, I hope you have someone. When hurtling through space at sixty thousand miles per hour, on a watery rock ball storming it’s way through the cosmos, it’s always best to have someone.
Do you know that they will die? I mean, of course you know, but think about it. How precious is this moment? How many dollars per hour is that time worth? The only commodity you’ll ever really own, labored away at the going rate. Now, don’t call out sick to work or anything, but call that person you love. Don’t even tell them anything. Just talk. A moment, a minute, an hour, let them ramble away. Let her tell you about her day, it won’t kill you. Ask him who won the game, you’ll survive. But while they talk, take heed that you, my friend, are entwined in the penultimate force of the universe, the highest form, the greatest and most complicated item in the catalogued universe. Love. All the neurological pathways in the brain are but dumpsters in alleyways when starved of love. Let it light you up. Let it consume you. For you have the greatest gift of all and, sorry to be the one to tell you, but it’s not gonna last…
That person you love? At times they were a piece of shit. That teacher you always looked up to? Probably masterbates to child porn. Your preacher molests his youth, your ancestors were raped, and even the queen herself sometimes gets the urge to fart.
It’s ugly, isn’t it? But what can you do? How can we ever find our way through this overgrown trail? What guru will guide us? What ancient book will tell me how I’m supposed to vote on stem cell research? What is one to do?!
I for one, have almost given up. Almost. I’ve felt things lately I don’t like. I’ve been hurt by someone I never believed would do something so devastating to me. And of course, like a fool, I trusted her. I put myself out there. Trust but verify, you say? Bah, humbug. Give me someone who sees such trust not as a spotlight to be hidden from, but as a flood light, illuminating the colors in between the world heretofore hidden from our mortal lenses. Give me someone who takes more joy in upholding the virtue and integrity that comes from recognizing that it is what makes life meaningful, and less compulsive gratification of momentary and destructive shortcomings. Someone who doesn’t cheat, not because they’re afraid they’ll get caught, or afraid that hurting that person will make them feel bad about themselves, but because they so cherish that love that it would be unspeakable.
Call me old fashioned. Call me crazy. Feel free to call me a hypocrit, because moments after I post this, I’ll probably regret it. I’ll probably remember that I don’t really feel this way. I won’t honestly believe it’s gonna be ok, I’ll remember how she doesn’t care, how happy she probably is with him. I’ll question what went wrong, then I’ll remember. I’ll remember how miserable I am. I’ll remember how broken I feel. How lost I’ve been, and for so long. I’ll stay up all night hating life. I will choke on the cloth of loneliness, and probably write some angsty four line poem that will effervesce across some social platform. I’ll wonder if I’ll ever really trust someone again. I’ll wonder if I’m going to be married one day, with kids and a home and a dog and a mortgage and just stay up late wondering ‘is she like her? Is she an honest to god rarity of a good person? Did I win the lottery here, or is she just a better liar than most?’ Will I go from letting her do whatever she wants to jealously sleuthing through her phone and emails? Hell, I could’ve checked her phone. There were even times I considered it, close to the end, when I could’ve checked her text messages etc. I would’ve found something, I’m sure, something that would make me doubt her just enough to see the glaringly obvious flaws in her. But I didn’t.
I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I was ignorant and trusting and innocent enough to have given that a chance. I’m glad I let you walk all over me. The illusion of your love made me happy, it did. And if you told me, back then, that I would never be able to look at another human being the same way again, that I would never again be able to let go like that around someone, that she would break my heart, I’d do it again. I’d let her stab me right in the back. Because I’m a sucker? Perhaps, I’m a putz for beautiful women. But I like to romanticize that into some kind of idealized and righteous pursuit. I like to fantasize that I could be the rock someone clings to, while falling through time like we are.
I fantasize that somewhere there is a girl so wise, she understands, perhaps through experience, the reason why love is holy. Someone who has awoken to that feeling. Someone who sees how having someone to fade away with makes it less sad, and more hallelujah. Someone who knows what it’s like to have someone’s playful “Hi ;)” carry you aloft for days.
Give me someone who sees that the glass is not half full, nor half empty. There is no glass. Only a mirage. That makeup, it doesn’t make you beautiful. You can have a D cup bra, and still be ugly as hell on the inside. You can drive a nice car, and wear expensive sunglasses, and rock that perfect outfit, and all it does is point out that out of all the things in the world you could be doing, you’re swept up in that bullshit. But hell, who am I to say, I only wanted to spend ‘quality time’, to cuddle, talk, wander around engrossed in each other, and make love until we tired. Pretty lame, I suppose, but damn do I miss it. I would like to forget. I’d like to go back in time and just live that moment one more second. Go back to when you loved me, when you cared, or at least to a time when the illusion was still impenetrable. I want to feel that warmth for just a second. I feel like an addict who’s dealer split town, and I’m badly in need of a fix.
You still here? Still reading? Of all the things you could be doing, still sitting there reading me? I’m flattered. My only regret is that the time you’ve spent with me could’ve been spent with someone you love. But that’s ok. Perhaps seeing your love through the lens of my pain might enlighten you to how precious this all is. Perhaps my lingering hope through forlorn dismay will act as a catalyst, triggering your deeper depression.
Either way, whoever you are, just remember: I love you. I really do… And I’m dying, without you.
-Icarus
Location: LI
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
