Writing My Way Out - May 12 2024

 

Writing My Way Out

May 12 2024

Once again

I try to write my way out

of despair.

Even knowing

that this is impossible.

That words on a page

or pixels on a screen

will most likely not be read.

And even if they are

nothing will change

no minds will be bent.

And while writing focuses the mind

and, for a time, can even distract from my distress

the futility persists;

like a coal fire

that smoulders underground,

spreading invisibly

for years on end.

So my last resort

is the defiant act

of venting my angst with words.

Like medieval medicine,

where being bled

lets the evil humours breathe,

the body

purify itself.

Leaching,

the universal cure

for dropsy

breakbone

ague,

the black dog

of melancholia.

Anyway, words clarify thought,

which is something I need

when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

They also comfort me

that I’m not sitting passively

while the world burns,

but rather

am the man of action

I always imagined I was,

stirring passions

changing minds.

And even though

I am last of all an optimist

I can’t help but try to reach across,

sustaining hope

to at least be heard.

So I write.

At best, tapping out words

and offering them up to a world

that doesn’t care to read.

Or, at worst

leaving them to posterity,

for whatever that is worth.

As if the long term

is the sure thing

our kind has always presumed.

As if the blunt force of faith

could rescue me

from existential despair

and creeping misanthropy.