"Friends"

 It's hard to know what a "friend" is these days
Not because people are fake
This isn't a personal slight against anyone
Nor even me being angry

It's just that, well, "friend" has been commodified
The corporation in your screen wants to be your "friend"
So does your boss. Your teacher. 
And your local representative.

I might know online/TV personalities very well
I could tell you how they'd act in stressful situations
Or things they've shared about their personal lives
But they don't know me at all

I know people I haven't seen in years
But we'd chat for hours if we ever met again
Some I was once close to
Some I'd like to be closer to

I don't mind having "friends"
They're just different things
To real,
loving,
friends

Hurting friends

I have friends that are hurting
Who I don't know how to heal
The pain is often hidden
But I know it is still real

I wish that I knew more medicine
Or that hugs could cure all pain
That good days always outnumber bad
Or age would not make us wain

I have friends that are hurting
Who I don't know how to heal
Sometimes all I can do is listen
So I can share the pain they feel

The hustle

You see the shuffle in the hustle is that you believe in muscle
That they never break, are never fake, and always serve to make folk quake
That injury is perjury - you're just not taking this seriously
Because the grind that you find is all purely in the mind

But it's not.

It's...it's just not.

Don't get me wrong it's great to be strong and to feel like you belong
To work tough and earn enough on the strength of *your* stuff
But being flash to earn cash feels like the route to a crash
And survival of the fittest feels restrictive in what goals are then permitted 

I'm not saying you shouldn't improve or find a groove 
Or that it's a bad identity to build a better "me"
But the one-against-all? What happens when you fall?
What of the virtue of vulnerability? Of the safety in community?

Burnout is real. I've learned this the hard way.
To work on a problem all night and all day.
"Easy" ain't bad to indulge in for a while.
"Easy" work still needs to be done. Even if it's making a smile.

I want to work on my passions. Not on what gets me status.
I want to be me. Not just the greatest and latest.
So I can till be me when what I am is not the "in-trend"
So that I can be genuine. Myself. Not fake and pretend.

I can work sublime in the times when I do have to grind.
It's not that I'm unable to sit at the table of your fable.
I just chose instead to spend my time when breaking bread.
Crafting a path that is so non-direct it could make you laugh.
But the hustle? I've found it toxic. Not a place I want to go.
Let me build others up around me, even if I have to build slow.

She could never believe she was beautiful

she was one of those women who could never believe she was beautiful
because too many years of being told "you're never pretty enough" will do that to a girl
and that girl will blossom into a woman
who will never see herself in the mirror. Just the advert of what she could be. Maybe.
if she just tried a little harder or a little longer or was born with better genes
but she was already trying so hard and so long
and she saw the beauty in her mother or her young daughter
but couldn't see it in herself
if she was beautiful by accident on an evening
it was the lipstick or the mascara
or the expensive dress 

she'd been lied too by too many men who could only see her surface beauty
and could her her closest friends when they told her in confidence about her inner beauty
she'd learned to brush off compliments and insults as jokes
because being genuine meant opening herself up to even more scars
even though her scars were beautiful too
telling a criss-cross pattern of her survival in a world that was too harsh to her
the flower that had been told she was a weed
by TV and teachers and crushes and herself.

but she was beautiful. Even if she couldn't see it.
she brought fresh air to a world of smoke
light to others even if she was in shadow
and smiles to faces only used to wearing frowns
it was those times of fresh air, light, and smiles
that she would let years of programming falter
and would manage, briefly
To believe, not just that she could one day be beautiful, but that she always had been

***

Inspiration song: July (part one) by Hotel Brooks 

Top 10 of 2022

Stumbled across my poems? Wondering what to read? Well, here are the 10 poems I wrote that meant most to me in 2022. Hopefully you enjoy them too.

Fuck-Up
At one point, I made a pledge to be more vulnerable in my poems. Welp, this is one of those. I don't swear often, which makes it quite fun to use for emphasis when I need to. "Why am I being so vulgar? This isn't me. Fuck." is also probably one of my favourite comic lines I've ever written.

There is a pressure rising
Climate change is probably the issue for my generation. The different responses people have to it from protests to apathy to active indulgence speaks a lot about personal philosophies. But I do feel like the desire for true, active change is rising, slowly but surely. The link between water pressure and societal pressure is a fun one here that I think demonstrated the issue well.

I want to speak on trauma
Life is full of difficult issues. Issues with no answers. I've written on a lot of them before with my thoughts, but I think this is a poem showing how much I've developed on the angle I approach such issues. Nuance is always tough to capture in short poems, which are inherently trying to capture a snapshot on a certain issue. But I think I manage it here - or at least, I manage to take a good step on the path to managing it in future.

30
I reserve the right to keep having existential crises while writing poetry. This isn't quite one of those, but it's close. It's a set of reflections on a life milestone, Maybe some others will find some similarity in their lives too. It makes it worth sharing, I think.

Hypocrites
As I begin teaching and coaching more, I start to have different things in life to reflect on. I need to remember to be kind and that we all make mistakes. And that the reason we make mistakes can be for reasons we don't understand ourselves. We aren't robots. I think too many people forget this.

Prove Myself to Myself
On a similar theme, I need to remember that *I* am not a robot. I have a lot of imposter syndrome. I also have a lot of improving to do. And I'm still trying to find the balance in that.

Christian Correction
Speaking of flaws, I'm including a more religious poem about how Christians should be more accepting than most of things that we are often instead judgemental about. 

Essential Workers
A very 2022 poem. A lot of the world is trying to reset after the initial pandemic readjustment. But, some of those readjustments were good and needed to be made. One big one is where we realised the jobs that are often looked down upon in society are some of the most important of all.

Fake Happy
It's nice to remember that things go well sometimes :)

Acrostic Poem/Haikus
A double to finish - simply because I don't think I've ever written either an acrostic poem or haikus on this blog before. They're more meta commentaries on the form, but also quite nice in their own right. A good reminder to myself to keep trying new poem types.

There we go. There were others I enjoyed, and almost certainly some I missed. If you read this blog, hopefully something I wrote meant something to you as well :)