A Time to be Getting By
Today is my time,
I tell myself, wanting to get things done,
wanting to be left quietly
on the shelf.
Don’t look at me.
Don’t touch me.
I don’t want to be held;
I just want to fade away,
and I just want to be part of the background
noise that someone else hears anyway.
That someone else walks straight through.
That someone else claims they can still listen to, even in the rain
and the storms, and the monsoons, and the hurricanes.
That was me;
I kid you not.
I wanted to be free.
I wanted a life that was not fraught
with projection, with pedophiles, with exallos
all trying to stop me, because—
why the fuck do I care, again?
I took up this life so that I could write poetry,
so that I could let go of a past filled with abusive friends
and institutions, and collectives, and fantasies projected as reality.
So that I could rewrite the heart, and make it last. Make it durable
and give myself back my own agency.
Have I got it?
Have I fought it?
That depends on what you need;
do you want me to be free?
How exactly do you want this poem
to read?
And how thoroughly do you want this Kristang gem
to gleam?
I am only what you want me to be:
a substack,
a story,
a telling that is processed, as it is,
through everything you feel is true:
a narrative that invites you to doubt,
to compare,
and to feel threatened enough to compete.
So don’t be like that.
I only have to be a nightmare,
when you yourself really have no idea
how to dream.