28
COLD COMFORT
⸻
used to call myself
a writer, a poet.
spent hours sitting
on the unforgiving couch into the wee hours of the morning,
drowning in dull, continuous clacks of the keyboards,
vomiting words all over the blank pages with a feverish fervent of a religious maniac,
arranging and rearranging,
building and breaking
sentences and paragraphs
with a childish giddiness.
life was all about:
thinking, living, breathing,
writing.
strange, now, looking back,
how my writing career abruptly concluded.
a couple of handfuls of
fake-deep poems,
drabbles,
and a short story that never really gets a proper ending.
i don't call myself anything anymore.
you either live long enough to
make it big,
or finally, understand
you'll leave behind
very little,
next to nothing.
i am nobody:
a statistical number in rigged polls, a blurry face in the crowd;
another soul that scuttles up and down the aisles of life;
a car in ever-flowing and ever-stagnant traffic;
another job resume amongst other job resumes;
i am just another one
of the thousands, millions of so-called writers and poets out there
eagerly hunching in the dark, typing away,
enthusiastically reading their works to a room full of people
equally eager to present their piece of trash.
applauding and smiling and clapping for each other
as if their talent was greater than the flimsy performance they had put on.
i am another forgettable death,
thinking i was something more than the insignificant aimless existence i had lived
and the poetry and story circle-jerking reading sessions i attended.
nowadays, i only write
when i've had enough beer,
enough emptiness inside me
to feel the gravity of my skeleton and bones rattling in my mortal flesh.
i only write when i've had enough of the mundane
and dumbed-down stupor
that was reality.
i only write when the late evening coffee hadn't worn off,
and the neighbour's dogs hadn't stopped barking deep into the night.
i am not a writer, not a poet.
i only write.