Numb

To dead bodies and wasted lives

To newspaper and TV
To all the eyes that watch me with all their wisdom
To the joylessness of being born 100 years too early
To the incompleteness of everything I ever started
To this neurotic half-life and this fakeness
To the rigid familiarity of being who they want me to be
To the relief and frustration of being myself underneath it all.
To the expectation of perfection I know I've transcended
But that I'll never achieve, O wise-eyes.
To everything I know and everything I don't
To the illegibility of my handwriting on this page
Disguised only 'cause we've run it through a machine.
To the incessant din I wish would cease
But which I know I'll miss when it's gone
To the threads I unraveled and then tried to knot
And tried to fix by wrapping them around scissors
To the requirement for a reason, a meaning,
As if the presence of one would justify things
To the inappropriateness of every situation
I manage to put myself in.
To stuff that's supposed to matter
To open chat windows, food, money, water, smiling
To nit-picking, insensitive, closed people who can't see the bigger picture
Who make it so hard to live, to love, to laugh
Yet I pull it off every time
To the fading memory of where the knives are
To the ache of time that is slow when it wants to be
And fast when it so chooses.
To the shackles around my ankles
That everyone thinks are pretty anklets
We're always tied down by something -
Even if we aren't, we become a slave to freedom.
To the clutter we collect, in our minds and in our rooms
To the gratitude I'm probably supposed to feel at being "alive"
To life, if there is such a thing, because it kills us all