Stuck

I get stuck on things. Hypnotized. Captivated by change when I can notice it happening. Rippling fires take my attention and pin it on the shift from a log to a coal to a pile of ash. I get stuck on that, I get stuck on river currents, tumbling tension pockets weaving in and out as obstacles force the water to adapt this meandering wiggle-walk to most effectively reach each drop's destination and yeah, the molecule will meet the ocean and then evaporate and come back and it may take the same downhill slide next time, or pick a different path, and it will participate in that wiggling dance for eternity, trapped by its own nature, but it will never dance the same way twice because originality is as important to the water molecule as the poet. It gets bored doing the same thing all the time, and it's just as ashamed as I am to paraphrase Alan Watts rather than concoct its own wisdom but we both avoided plagiarism and that's what counts. You find a rhyme scheme, you stick to a rhythm, then break it for a tangent and remember that not every word has to rhyme at the end of the sphelecum.

I get stuck on this. I get stuck on the way the ocean waves keep track of the world's pulse. Earth's heart monitor is the captured attention spans of a hundred million beach bums listening to a slow rock rhythm. Somehow we all know what's going to happen next even though we missed the ocean's beginning and the first season isn't even streaming on netflix. We fill in the missing pieces. It probably went something like “Ghhhhhrrrrrrrrr..... Ghhhhrrrrrrrrr”

 I get stuck on that. I get stuck on songs I've never heard before that sound so familiar I swear my parents must have played them in my crib, shit that came out in 2010. I get stuck wishing I already knew the words and simultaneously finding out I've been singing them wrong. It's not like anybody making that music knew what they were doing, it's not like the lyrics they wrote are more correct than the ones I made up. Every pair of ears is a remix. I'm sorry if I didn't understand your message, dead artist. But if it helps, no one understands me either, and I feel like I understand a part of you that you didn't even acknowledge. A part of you I likely projected to delude myself into thinking a stranger shared my experience because it just so happens to make life easier, just like it makes life easier for me to tell myself I'm a good person. What even is that? It's so abstract but god dammit my cognition glued to the concept.

I get stuck on that. I get stuck on the way your face looked that night when I told you how I felt about you. I get stuck knowing it doesn't matter if we get married and grow to hate each other or merely stalk one another on Facebook and secretly wonder what might have been, nothing can bring back the particular shade of moonlight that danced upon your skin. It's not the way your body ages and accumulates wrinkle, or how our feelings went from butterflies in our bellies to cocoon shields and caterpillar poison, it's just the way I can never tell you how I feel for the first time again. You can never hear one of my poems again yet the last time I tried it was ruined, I made a mistake.

I get stuck on that. I get stuck on novelty. I get stuck on tasting the moment and finding the flavor that fools me best into thinking I'm really alive. Turns out you can't get it from a cup, through a straw, you have to stick your mouth straight under the slurpee machine and pull the lever. Turns out feeling alive is fucking messy and against company policy and you'll piss of the people that work here because they secretly wish they could do the same. And then they get mad at themselves but because we're all one, they confuse who they're pissed at and take it out on the "crazy person." Well fuck your cardboard cup full of lies, I'm sick of tasting plastic every time I drink from the chalice of life. You'll have to grab me by the feet and drag me away from the authenticity excreting from life's teet, I'm here to feel alive. I will not be stuck, hypnotized. I will not make all my words harmonize. Rivers would be boring if they were all straight lines. People would be boring if they accomplished all their dreams. I want to see that coal ignite. I want to see how it glows. The weather's cold tonight and I don't draw an ounce of warmth or comfort from either untouched logs, or their perfect finished products. To me, perfection is an ash-clump. Give me process. Give me practice. This time I promise not to give up halfway through under the weight of my mistakes.