I have always known myself
Completely
Known my actions and words
To be my own
Understood their consequences
Even if attempting to deny them
But this
Is confounded circular logic
A cycle of wrong opinions
Misleading fallacies
I’ve always known myself
And this
Cannot be
What I
Believe.

This solitude
Is from the endless competition
And the joyless repetitions
I acknowledge to exist
This solitude
Is realized in a daily critique
Of the sarcastic and threatening
Ambition of each opponent
This solitude
Derives from hearing in each voice
The acridity which dulls my own
A caustic warning underlying every smile
This solitude
Is empty and complete
Its control only faltering
When I am alone

Dried paint
Dotted on my skin
Freckles of green
On an ivory canvas
Smudged pastel
Smeared to my elbow
A rainbow of oil
Emphasizing my absentmindedness
Faded scribblings
Penned on my left hand
An inky vine
Of diversion from the day’s agenda
Embellishing an otherwise uniform body
With marks of individuality

I’m just a little bit off-
My fingers are a little crooked,
My toes a bit short,
My ears a little uneven,
My smile thinner than I would like.
I laugh slightly too loud;
I speak maybe too much.
I’m just a little bit off,
But maybe I’m just critiquing myself
Too harshly.

I’m spinning
            spinning
            spinning
My feet are clear
But the world is murky
And directions are a haze
I’m spinning
            spinning
            spinning
Free from all illusion of stability
Free from all pretenses of focus
I’m spinning…
            And the world is turning faster
And I stumble to a halt
Watching chances circle past
I was spinning
            spinning
            spinning
And now I’ve fallen
dizzy
To the ground.

I don’t know who I am anymore
All of the archetypes I used to fall within
No longer quite ring true
Perhaps even attempting to classify myself
Deprives me of individuality
And subjects me to the categories
Others have established
To prefabricate the person I will become
Who will buy the products they need to sell
And maintain the equilibrium of industry
But even so
I am not who I was before
I don’t know who I am anymore

The closest to God I’ve ever come
Was lying drowsy in my bed
Eyes closed, lights out
Thinking about my future
And that of the world
And all the people who needed life
Who needed love, who needed help
And everything that I could do
To give them that
And I thought of all the wrongs in the world
And how many of them I was causing
And I prayed there was a way to redeem myself
And I prayed for repentance
And then I resolved myself to make it better
In every word and thought and action
Because it is up to me, if no one else
To reshape this maze of lies
We call the present
I prayed that I could make it better
And then I set off to try.

For what purpose have my lips traversed?
Is there any scenery they have grazed yet unmarked by another?
Have I yet spewed a single original sentiment
Or am I just another redundancy?
In this world I perceive as my own,
Does anything inherently belong to me?
Do I have rights, do I have worth?
Has anything ever been mine?
Or am I just repeating
Reciting the words of ancient philosophers
Reiterating the ideas of generations
Reliving the actions of every other human?
How can I claim proprietary rights to any experience
To any idea, thought, sentence, deed?
I can merely live
With the hope that every priceless moment
Will be permanently ingrained in my memory
And that maybe then, that memory,
If not the action itself,
Will be mine.

The stakes I keep setting for myself are high
I can always push just a little farther
And though I like myself
I am not good enough
No matter how hard I try
I am not good enough
There is always more to achieve
And there is a limit to how much I can manage
I can be good, but I can rarely be the best
And that’s not enough
In this world where everyone’s multi-talented
I need to conquer all obstacles
But they have me blocked in
And hyperventilation won’t win me the future I need
Stress attacks won’t help me acquire my goals
Worry won’t let me succeed
But if I don’t become good enough
Then I fail

I comprehend the futility of belief
And yet still
I cling to the hope
That God must exist
That there must be more to life
Than what I see
Because what I see
Isn’t enough
Money and sex and drugs
They aren’t enough
But the God I am pushed to accept
Falls flat on his face when challenged
Standing on the weak grounds of intolerance
The stories of religion are marvelous
Perhaps even suspect to suspicion
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this sin
Sin, which I know is real
Could be recalled by the death of a single man