My first spoken word poem on YouTube, everybody! Trigger Warning: It's high on sarcasm, contains private details and high on personal attacks. Put your defenses down and enjoy!
It's a Sunday in the late October.
Really a late evening but not so late
to discount the embarrassing situation
I'm going to describe to you right now.
I'm staying at my parents' at 22.
What? Don't look at me like that!
I was the college senior who graduated with an online semester
and entered the lovely corporate virtually.
Don't you think that's embarrassing?
I bet COVID can earn me a few sympathy glances
from those who understand how stupid it feels
to live with your parents after you've spent 4 years away
cribbing and pining over the discomforts of living in a dorm.
But the truth is I just opened up this dialogue
with a relatable story so that you might care to
listen to what's actually embarrassing.
Oh you thought I'm a poet so I don't know how to sell myself?
Well didn't I tell you, I paved my way into corporate in Covid.
Must say something about my smooth talking, something I'm going to use
to get inside people's heads and hearts but mostly sheets and DMs
coz you see I'm an ugly fat crazy kid who's got dreams and potentials
but also a bug inside her head that some people like to call
laziness, eh...
procrastination, much like it..
and wait for it: fear of success!
Well if that's not really something for people who are afraid to admit
their lack of ability to make any real success count.
All these fancy self help book jargon!
Look who's talking? A seven-teen in the shoes of a twenty two year old
trying hard to adult with three Instagram handles:
One for friends and families, one for her hobby and the other one to
just randomly stalk people and eventually get blocked.
But hey that's not me. My third account is actually called personal.challenges
with a dot in between because you see only one person before me cared to
improve themselves and showcase the journey on a social media platform
designed to cripple out self-esteem and security by feeding us on the dopamine
spikes of social validity.
I don't hate Instagram. It's just that I only like to look at those pictures that make me hate me.
But here I am in a dark room with a bed and those warm rice lights on
to set the kind of mood you'd picture me be in always if you follow me on Instagram.
See here's the duplicity of truths. I am that person too. But this is also me,
right now as I chronicle the cheap thrills of my Sunday evening I am surrounded
by nothing but wild desires to be possessed
(by ghosts of-course, not people.. I think I belong more in that realm)
or really just intoxicated enough to justify the solo cardio jumping I call dance
to random playlists with groovy beats, to say the least as I makeshift
a disco-light on my laptop screen.
Oh believe me it's dark but also light:
Much like how paradise would feel to the dead, which I am by the way, on the inside -
a hollow chest, the words just an eulogy to the past self who really was delusional
and yet, or more so because of it,
passionate about all the things in the world.
You see I live and speak in the shadow of my past or as a mood board to my future,
neither of which are really true to this moment and here I am,
spread on the floor like all my memories and insecurities!
Don't worry it's not a sad story.
I have pinned my dreams on the bulletin board up there and the forced convection
from my tiny little fan is blowing my hair in the wind just enough to make me fall in love
almost with this picture of me:
not half as shattered I'd want to be, not half as gathered and collected as I dream to be.
My room's a perfect mess,
just how my guitar's a tad perfectly out of tune and I don't know how to hold it,
much like how I don't know how to hold on to nice people but I will try
and I will strum the six chords for hours today to understand what Bryan Adams meant when he said,
"they played till their fingers bled."
Well not exactly I'll do that, i.e., bleed myself on the guitar, I've done that when I was fourteen.
So yeah I'm cool, but y'all get the point right?
So let me get back to the embarrassing singing, dancing, vibin', chillin' whatever it is before it's 9 pm
and I have to show up at the dining table for dinner.
It's a resurrected ritual really and I respect that
coz between the two of us, I don't think my dysfunctional family could ever pull it together
to have a meal so peacefully and in quite.
So if you sympathize, please ship a bottle of red wine and I'd write you another
sweet breakdown in it's mellow high.
Would you care to join me in this mad ride?
I'm far from calling it a night.
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