POEM - Hercules Ln

People are locking themselves away

so that they can’t be used,

because the vastness of average minds

have begun proving how much

louder than the rest of us

it is that they can be;

teaching the influenceable that use

is a road which leads only to heartache

My, what insufferable intellects they have

“All the worse to better you with.”

Everyone uses everyone,

and the end result simply cannot be

misuse in the majority,

else we’d discard the social contract

Use is hugging your child

to alleviate the imbalance of a bad day

Use is free time given to (or taken from) a friend

in order to get lost in conversation

Use is going to work, no matter what the job

may ask of you

  

You receive something of value

by mere way of involvement,

no matter how selfless or painful

your involvement appears

You are chasing reward for the favored

voices in your head, which have

an endless and egoistic need

to feel validated with treasures

The only perversion of what it means

to be human, therefore, lies in

delivering harm to others,

and that’s exactly what people

are doing to you when they convince you

that it’s perverse to feel

  

Look to whoever it is that your eyes

never stop wanting to see;

know that it’s natural to chase this desire

with your remaining senses

If allowed to use said person for pleasure,

know that they intend to use you in return

As experience with them deepens,

you may encounter things about one another

which you’re unwilling or unable to live with

To try is to chance the probable nature

of failure, but you’ll find growth

on the other side of each loss,

and you’ll move forward with the joy

of having lived in the attempt to love;

this is what it means to be a lover

  

You can shun uncertainty

from that lonely and low-lit corner,

but the notion of ‘forever’

is chief thief among our mortal mess

Our very existence is brutally temporary;

this is what they don’t want you to know

—this is what they, themselves, wish

(in vain) to never realize

So dance drunkenly amid

whatever garden’s being grown,

for to seek perfection in the aging wilds

is a single-test lesson

in ‘how to die alone’