Scribblings - July 31 2025

 

Scribblings

July 31 2025

A day, like any other.

Forgettable

even as it’s lived.

So if memory makes us who we are

I am arrested,

inhabiting a past

that’s increasingly distant

and incrementally lost.

I envy those

who have memorable lives.

Who are consequential

and will be remembered

at least for a time.

Envy and regret,

two emotions

I’m reluctant to own;

only bitterness would be worse.

But retrospection

is also a teacher,

and envy, instead of sour

can be aspirational.

   . . . Or so one hopes.

Will this poem be the one thing

that makes me remember today;

my unsettled state 

of discontent,

this enervating sense of futility?

Or is it, too, forgettable?

That is, in the unlikely event it gets read.

So here I sit

like every day

living in my head;

a scribbler

assembling words

and churning out verse

the world happily ignores,

a solipsist 

who talks to himself

and compulsively takes notes,

as if keeping track

was actually of interest.

I’m an ouroboros eating its tail;

as if you could feed on yourself

and flourish.

And if not sitting,

then the bystander

who wandered past

and simply went on by.