POEM - Didactic Equations

For the longest time now,

I’ve felt like an angry stranger

when facing most of the world

which exists outside of my head

I have lived lives apart from reality

while within the sanctity

of my hopeful imagination

And I’ve considered killing myself

when the pathetic fact of what I’d become

was no longer deniable;

that the most exciting moments

of my most average days

were all fiction —

nothing but stories I’d read aloud

in the silence of my thoughts

to keep myself engaged

in the unenviable monotony

of this ordinary which I allowed myself

to be reduced to

  

But the unexpected happens,

as we should expect it to

Hardship left me seeking ease

The discomfort could no longer

be comforted by make-believe

I took a chance on myself,

and found those dice were

still loaded in my favor

Now I’m looking at old dreams anew;

not counting them like puppeted corpses —

finding the only thing wrong with me

is how afraid I’ve been of loving myself,

or how blind I was to everyone else

  

You come home from your hard lives,

and get lost in a book, or a movie;

a video game, a song, or a glass of wine

You seek most any room there is,

or could be, so long as it’s not

the one you’re actually in

What you look forward to in life

is an escape from the one you’re living

As the entertainment opiates strengthen,

the chasm of unbodied brains

(as well as the desire for such a thing)

grows beyond our ability

to reach each other

I know because I am one of you

I know because I am now seeking

the joys of experiencing

both your brains and bodies,

yet finding that city

built of walking, talking flesh and blood

is a ghost town

  

Still, I am not ready to forget you

in favor of that next, virtual high

For I’ve come out of my meager matrix

with every intention of never denying

our tangible potential

And this is the part where you join me