January 4, 2025

i’m ecstatic
i’m scared
i’m electrified
i’m anxious
i’m invigorated
i’m apprehensive
i’m defensive
i’m meditative
i’m happy?
[maybe?]
i’m existential
i’m whatever
i’m apoplectic
i’m in shock
i’m winding down
i’m revving up
i’m lost
i’m found
i’m starting now
i’ve gone through so much
i want
i want
i need
i yearn
i spin yarn after yarn after yarn
but i never seem to learn
that it’s all part of the human condition —
there isn’t one affliction or emotion
better or worse than the others
when you look at one whole life lived
[and you’re not even near the end
as far as makes sense — why are you always
wrapping up your life in your head
to make the ending
an end
rather than a beginning
of a new era]

[you do you,
but also,
there’s more left of you
than you seem to act like
you
have
left]

September 16, 2024

i know the steps i’d take
and the things i’d say
to be mean

but i never say or do them
they remain inside my mouth/my throat/buried deep inside my mind

and though those actions i’ve never taken
and i know i never will,
how come having those thoughts alone makes me feel like
the worst person who has ever lived?

[i know i know the point is
we cannot control our immediate reactions/thoughts/feelings,
but what we can control —
and what shows the merit of a person —
is how we act on them, but i guess i just want to be so good of a human
that i never have human feelings
ever]

June 6, 2024

here we go
into the flow
of a habit
we’re tracking
and i’m tricking myself
[or at least it feels like it]
into feeling like i can actually
write more poetry
when i don’t have a creative bone in my body
[again, all perceptions
from the realm of the brain]
and i can’t even think of something i’d like to address
because everything feels overwhelming
to the point where i’m just beating myself up about
not doing anything
as i can feel the trauma of the whole situation
bearing down
and bearing through
what little defenses i had up
i had going
and i’m too hungry to think of good rhymes
and i’m too tired to conenct any of the lines
from here to there
from Palestine to liberation
but i know it’s here
somewhere
i know it’s there
and through it all we can liberate
the Congo and Sudan and Haiti
and everywhere else people look like me — in that i have two eyes
and a nose
and a mouth that smiles
and a heart that feels
and ears that love to hear stories
and the human condition is so much more
and so much less
than we make it out to be

the human condition is being human
here
on this planet

please
let’s not
lose it.

March 12, 2024

the emptiness
the spite
the despair
the hope that’s barely there
the human condition
that really doesn’t have to be conditional
to billionaires’ whims

there is a different way

[there always was
there always is]

July 18, 2023

tho no one
likes
the un-airconditioned train
i still smile to myself
every time a new group enters
and makes the same
“awww, nahhh/no!”
when they realize
the car they’ve chosen
will only increase
the nyc heat

it’s the little moments that show —
we are more alike than we are different

July 4, 2023

watch out
i’m moody
i’m grumpy
i want to wear all black
mourn the death of this nation
that was never that great to begin with
but conceptually it had some nice ideas…

…is that the human condition?

everything looks pretty good on paper
but the moment it comes to actively
executing the ideas laid out
everything, everything, falls apart?