Twenty

Twenty-Six Lines

Chris Leave a comment

Dearest friend and oft-times mentor,

I apologize for the lateness of the hour,
But I’m writing this note from my lover’s bower
(Which should explain the particular artistry
I’m using to write this bit of poetry)
And could not help my mind but turn toward you
As I consider the New Year and what I’ll do
With my regained health
And stronger sense of self.

Though my attention has been scarce of late,
It has not escaped my notice that still you wait
On my promises of impending time
Which all wound up going toward my climb
Out of those depths all dark and heavy and blue
Instead of all the things I promised we would do
When I would tell you how
I did not have time right now.

Thank you for your patience touring my tribulations,
Your kindness has helped keep whole my foundations
While I work on the process of rebuilding
And now I am eager to do your bidding.
So let us make up for all the time that was lost
And you need no longer worry about the cost.
Now I’ve strengthened my will
I can cover the bill.

With ceaseless thanks and gratitude, your friend.
P.S.
All that I have to add
As I read this in review
Is that if you had the thought
That this poem was about you
Then you, friend, should be proud
Because that thought is likely true

Twenty-Four Hours

Chris Leave a comment

The quiet November nights with the soft tip-tapping sound
Of falling leaves, deep chill breezes, and shoes upon the ground.
The starry skies and moonlit nights of staggering back home
Amidst the thrills and cutting chills of winter’s icy poem.
Warm with drink and laughter, no thought is held reserved
For all the shame and hatred that I so rightly deserve.

The still November nights with the raucous, jarring sound
Of hidden laughter and skittering shoes upon the ground.
The cloudy skies and shadowed nights of hurrying back home
Amidst the fears of coming years in anxiety’s poem.
Cold, alone, and mopey, no thought is kept preserved
From all the shame and hatred that I so rightly deserve.

The nights are always growing old
And the air is always growing cold.
All these stories have been told
And all their words are growing mold.
All I have has been sold
And I have nothing to hold.
The whispers grow bold
And I decide to fold.

Twenty-Three

Chris Leave a comment

Stilted prose and dirty floors
Are all that exist between the doors
Of my mind and of my home,
But I’m tempted to leave them alone.

What right have I to tell them how to be
When I am at the fluid age of twenty-three?
The age of emotion and the flower of youth:
Constantly warring with the iron truth
Of absurdity and the joy of friends
Until the drinks are gone and the talking ends.

The bitter nights of solemn thought;
The bitter-sweet kiss of love sought;
The serendipity of friendship found;
The stoic, solid feeling of the ground
Beneath your feet as you spin the tales
Of loving friendship amidst the empty ales
and liquor bottles from the night’s escapades
Believing life has dealt blessings in spades.

What right do I have to be
So sad and melancholy?

Young but wise beyond my years,
Already immune to most the fears
That keep others awake at night
Despite the fact they’re doing alright.
The envy of many of my peers
Who, despite workshops and endless tears,
Cannot seem to make things work
And wind up as some poor sales clerk.

Stability and fortune are my reward
For spending every night I could afford
Working or studying despite the call
Of friends who are out having a ball,

So tell me how I can justify
A feeling for which I do not qualify?

I have luck and skill both,
The opportunity for growth,
Talent and determination,
Praise and edification
From those who can see just how far
I’ll go and not think it bizarre
That I might have some attribute
or great masterpiece to contribute.

Yet here I am at night’s darkest hour
Wishing I could ignore the nascent power
Of my roiling emotions and troubled thoughts
That tie my gut in non-euclidean knots.
With all the clanging, clamorous noise,
One thought maintains my outward poise:

The moon is so full and bright
While I sit here alone tonight.

Age 22

Chris Leave a comment

Ever since I decided I wanted to do a parody of a Shakespearean Sonnet and wound up making it about the state of my life at 22, I’ve done a “state of my life” poem every year. They’re usually on the more thoughtful side or a way to address the biggest issue in my life at the time and, as a result, fairly thematically different. There’s one from last year that I’m not sure I want to share yet, so I’m going to hold off on that, but I’m going to share one of each of the others every day this week, culminating in the poem I came up with yesterday as my current “state of my life” poem. It’ll be pretty clear which one you’re reading as the titles give it away. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this week of poetry while I get my buffer set up and my writing routine worked out.

 

When I cannot play Minecraft, in disgrace
I weep for my poor soul’s addicted fate
And my computer, bootless in its place
And looking so sad in its broken state.
Wishing that it were not busted, a hope
Featured in dreams unending, I go on
Desiring to play but yet have to cope
With music videos I’ve come upon.
Yet I, my weakness almost despising,
Haply buy a new computer to play.
Like to a child at Christmas, arising
From my slumber to play Minecraft all day.
I think to myself, “What else should I do?”
Irrational? Me? No, just twenty-two.

A Day in the Life of a Twenty-Something

Chris Leave a comment

You wake up at a variety of times on any given day, but you went to bed early yesterday and slept until 9. With over 9 hours of sleep, you feel more refreshed and ready than you’ve felt in weeks. Your back kind of aches, but you know it’s a sign that you slept well and it’ll eventually disappear when you can afford a new mattress. Specifically, a mattress that wasn’t bought of the cheap end of the discount rack. Content that your morning will be quiet, you grab you phone off of your nightstand and review the notifications.

A few texts from your friends who wake up early or stay up late, the usual plethora of social media updates, and a message from your parents about Christmas plans are all that great you. No application updates happened over night and none of your passive games have anything to report. You set your phone aside for a moment to rub your eyes  and turn on your lamp. After you eyes have lost some of their crusty feeling, you open the social media account of your choice, looking for updates from friends or the latest news on your interests.

Instead, all you can find is people screaming out about the latest tragedy perpetrated by your government. Maybe there’s some news about the latest disaster to happen exactly as the protesters predicted it would and the corporations swore it wouldn’t. Perhaps there is some heartening news about the investigations into corruption at the highest levels of your government, but that is almost always tempered by the commentary from a few trusted analysts that there has been solid enough evidence to prosecute for months now and the ruling party has so far refused to do so. Instead, the heads of your government are intent on pushing laws through the legislative bodies without giving anyone a chance to read them or without even fully understanding them. Gone are the days of your childhood, when it seemed like everyone worked together to do the right thing. The stories your parents told you of sensibility, logic, and justice ruling at the end of the day are no longer relevant. Now, everything is “us or them” and no one is willing to reach across the aisle to actually try to understand.

You close your social media application without ever looking up your friends or for developments in your hobbies or interests. Instead, you put your phone aside and open a book, play a video game, or fire up Netflix. You disengage not because you don’t care, but because you care and there’s too much for you to care about. Ten minutes of browsing has left you almost as tired as you were the night before. At least you managed to avoid finding any articles written by previous generations about how your generation has ruined the country or will soon ruin it. That much irony in the morning isn’t good for anyone’s health.

After a suitable amount of time, you finally haul yourself to your feet and start getting ready for the day. Some kind of food is consumed, nothing terribly interesting but enough to keep your body functioning, and the usual hygiene routines are observed. Perhaps a little more quickly than you would like, but water is a finite resource and not free. Neither is the electricity used to heat your water or power your stove. After you’ve finished the more pleasant parts of your day, you clench your jaw and make yourself attend to your bills. It is early in the month, and most of them come due over the next two weeks, carefully staggered so you can make sure they all post to your account before the next one is due. It wouldn’t be good to get overdrawn again. Once a year is more than enough.

Bills paid, almost happily because it means you’ve got more than enough money to pay them all sitting in your account, you start reviewing your Christmas gift list. You’d like to buy presents for a lot of people, but you’re not sure you can afford to. If you bought everything from Amazon, you probably could, but you just read an article the night before about how the warehouse employees are collapsing on the job and that the CEO finally passed the 100 billions net-worth mark. The idea of that much difference between the people who actually do the work for a company and the person who sits on the top of the human pyramid sickens you.

You still buy several gifts from Amazon, though, as you go about acquiring Christmas presents. There’s just nowhere else that can get them to you in time, much less actually has what you want. Most places that might have been able to do that at one point have buckled under Amazon’s greater financial weight. Just like the local post office that’s been marking packages as delivered because they don’t have the staff to deliver everything on Amazon’s promised day. They need to cheat so that they’re not penalized for failing to make good on the contracts their superiors have signed with the cross-industry giant that is Amazon.

Christmas attended to, you settle in for the remainder of your evening, alternating between reading, watching TV, or maybe attending to a creative project or two. Even though you’ve made effort to avoid it for just one day, the raging inferno of inequality and corruption has leaked into your life through your friends and through the constant awareness that you are a part of the industrial machine driving your country and your world toward ruin. The only way you could avoid being a part of it is by abandoning modern life entirely and taking up life as a sustenance farmer.

Unfortunately, you can’t do that, as appealing as it sounds at times. Your debt, accrued at the behest of your parents, older relatives, and role models, must be paid back. If it is not paid back by you, then it will burden your parents who, while much better off than you, are still trying to get their financial future back in order after the bubble burst last decade. You know what its like to feel the weight of that debt hanging around your neck, changing the way you make every decision. You wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Instead, you eat a quiet dinner of something simple and filling, go back to your Netflix subscription and watch it until you feel sufficiently removed from your problems to go to bed. After preparing for bed, you lay back and feel the steel springs shift and twang as you stir beneath the covers. Eventually, you fall asleep after consoling yourself with the thought that maybe tomorrow will be better.