Gathering Thoughts - Aug 31 2025

 

Gathering Thoughts

Aug 31 2025

How long since I last spoke?

And if my silence is self-imposed

what am I waiting for?

Still, I talk to myself.

Or, more exactly, to some enigmatic you,

as if I there were two of me

and we had to keep in touch.

Perhaps an absent twin

separated at birth

I’m getting reacquainted with?

Or is someone listening in?

And for some reason it's urgent

that they hear every word,

no forbidden thought 

goes unobserved. 

Or is all this muttering 

yakkety yak

and circling back

essential

in order to hear myself think?

As if I need to string together words

to make sense of the world

and where in it I fit.

As if without words

there would only be animal urges

grunts and calls

budding thoughts I can't resolve. 

But it’s the writing that’s hardest to stop.

As if it’s satisfaction enough

to put words on the page

I suspect will never be read.

Am I leaving them to posterity?

Or is print as impermanent as air;

as illusory

as life ever-after

but consoling nevertheless?

Or perhaps it’s just natural 

for the pressure of language to build,

like a heated gas

in a closed container

that simply has to get out.

I ghost through the world 

ears cocked

but tongue stilled.

I am a silent presence,

a wraith

apparition 

cold shiver of air,

invisible 

as well as unheard;

or perhaps

because of it. 

Someday, my silence will break.

But what will I say?

Will I even remember how

or will I have regressed;

like a muscle left unused 

a love that ends too soon?

To adolescence,

voice breaking

eyes rolling

and mostly of few words

unless it’s with his friends?

To a toddler's high-pitched voice,

who’s often tongue-tied

but loves to talk

and is thrilled by words like fart?

Who’s always asking why

and isn’t satisfied

with just because.

To one so young, he can't;

but looks you in the eye

as if you're all that matters,

gurgles, coos, and cries

has yet to learn to laugh.

Or to an early order of man

who still isn’t ready to speak,

too preoccupied with the questions

to presume he can answer

and simply refuses to guess?

I do feel both invisible and unheard. But unlike my “early order of man”, am pretty sure of my ideas, believe I have useful and important things to say,  and would love to speak up.

But I lack the drive and temperament to find a good soapbox. Too reclusive. Don’t work well with others. More nihilist than activist. And I guess feel I missed my chance:  too old, too late, too distant from popular culture to easily relate. 

So I just grumble and mutter, then relieve the pressure by writing this stuff. Console myself that if anyone ever wants to hear, it will be there, waiting for them    . . . or at least until it isn’t, when Google pulls the plug. Or civilization destroys itself, the grid fails, and basic survival makes such indulgences laughable. 

If anything, I talk too much, given the chance. It’s listening I need to work on, not talking.