Cabin Fever

Go to Where you don't want to

11-23-04

Do you want what's on the surface
or do you want what's already begotten?
It's not good enough for me to buy
even though it's been in my hands many times.
I've never suffered for my craft so much,
no, not to have it taken from me
and shattered and disregarded.
What's paper to pockets of a crack fiend
is exactly what a day's worth of writing is to me.
Do you take what isn't yours by listening,
or build something better
with two hands, a heart and a mind?
What's yours can stay yours
if you respect mine as mine.
But it's good to be you, isn't it?
When the only thing you have to do is be you?
You saw your name in the paper last week.
It was someone else's obituary;
were you an ally or a tributary?
Maybe you were "down" and he was down and out.
In the end though, it was you that mattered,
and you reaped the lights and fame
while someone else paid a price.
Now here we are, and here's where it goes.
That time of year that we always fear.
Everything happens for a reason,
but nothing seems to work in autumn.
I'm in the month of my annual implosion,
where my choices define who I am to be
for the next long time.
Maybe it's that, or I make a choice
to put that off by going back to square one again
because I can't get over this step
from the other last great starting point.
On the verge of the bitter of my discontent
is the outlook in front of me
because it's how life always seems to go...
just when I start to get in the clear of things
and catch a few breaks,
something gets broken or broken into
and I'm right back where I began.
That could be the difference in us.
Your outlook is forward;
mine is littered with remembrance
and my heart won't let my eyes look up
without looking back
and telling myself not to let problems happen again.
You will, one day,
become bigger than the both of us.
You'll be sold on something
you may not like or believe in,
and become what you hated without ever knowing
while we go our separate ways,
perhaps never going anywhere in the first place.
I know this based on more than
me knowing myself better than yesterday's horoscope does.
Yet all I've seemed to learn
is that I can go anywhere but here.