nonsense

this is a piece of writing
writ just for you
to take and toss among
all the other pieces of writing
that were also made for
your consumption

How easy words and language have become. I don't even feel that bad about writing such crappy poetry anymore.

Man on the train

The man was like a character from a well-read book. Not so much because he looked or acted in a particularly comical fashion or fit any well-known archetype. It was simply because he wore all his thoughts on his face, and through the way he moved in a manner that was almost painfully plain for all to see. So much so, that by simply observing him one felt as if they knew and understood him as intimately as they knew and embraced the central character from their favourite novel.

Inspirational Words

"And even if the person standing next to you seems better in every single imaginable way possible, even if every comparison between you and them results in a determination that you occupy an entirely lesser existence by every current fashionable indicator of worth, You have value. Even if it is that your vulnerability, your inability to match up to expectation challenges why we have these standards and expectations in the first place."

"Fuck you."P thought.

How patronising, to be told that one has worth despite being a miserable, underachieving human being. To relish in the fact that the only value you bring to the environment around you is your ability to make others feel better about themselves.

"Don't need the help."

Overripe

She reminded P of overripe fruit.

From her eyes seeped a heady sense of dismayed possibility, so that every time P looked or considered her, the slightly heavy feeling of missed opportunity remained, sickly sweet.

Recurring dream

Whether or not P felt this way because she experienced it as a kind of violent act of hatred against herself, P was not entirely sure. All P felt at the time was a fuzzy, unfocused kind of rage that wanted release. A slow tension that P experienced as a slight, but annoyingly constant pressure. Until the cumulative result of these tiny constrictions made themselves evident to her as a concrete thought: heartache. For what? It was not as if P and H had ever consummated any sort of real relationship. There was never any certainty that either of them had considered themselves involved with the other. P was perhaps heartbroken over the fact that nothing had ever happened. Half in love and half broken over the beauty of a barely there what-if.

To try and pursue this relationship now might be worthless - but P often had dreams about H, and in them he always hazily appeared as a sort of mirage, always just a little out of reach. As if, the perfection of their unconsummated interest in each other was able to be contained in the dreamy memory of a 16 year-old adolescent boy.

An unfortunate reminder

L was the kind of person whose existence made P feel frustrated with herself. It was the kind of frustration that simmered, the kind that constantly itched. Tense enough to burst at any second, but seemingly contained beneath the physical surface of the skin. As if it was the body's way of acknowledging what it understood as unjustified, unfocused hatred.

In other words, on some level, L unfortunately reminded P of herself.

L had a presence about her that made tangible the slew of self-criticisms and half-formed thoughts that periodically shaped the way P saw her own sad existence. Being in L's company materialised these otherwise transient, immaterial thoughts, made them excruciatingly concrete. L was a living, breathing, physical manifestation of everything P felt (and hated) about herself.

Of course P tried to attribute the annoyance to what she convinced herself were more objective criteria - it was her particular manner of speaking, the way she argued about a point that lacked any sort of contention worth debating about, even her body shape and size. These flimsy justifications shot out periodically from her animal brain. Of course L's personality, her figure, the simple fact of her existence, was to blame for P's annoyance.

But of course there was no logical justification. Only that L instigated a set of circumstances, an environment which fostered the unpleasant feeling that one was being continuously judged and criticised. How undignified! To be made to feel so self-conscious without intending to.

Useless Question

It poured out from within her in a flood of visceral sensation that could only be expressed with a closing of her eyes and a short, but curt exhalation of breath. "What was the point of all of this?", she thought to herself, fully aware of the fact that this question had probably been repeated to the point of futility over thousands and thousands of years of human civilisation. She was even about seventy percent sure that an animal, perhaps a pig or horse or some other domesticated creature that had been in the company of humans for far too long, had thought the same thing to itself while struggling to appease the slew of base impulses and desires that propelled its every waking moment.