them's the rules (i'm afraid)

i often wonder if there might not be another part of myself rotting, coiling away unbeknownst to me
like potatoes in the pantry - oh, i should use those. or it will be quite unpleasant indeed

all that i am for was then. now is only nothing.

if there were more to me, i would know it. i would have accessed that excess energy, by now
i would have excelled, i believe, along that hidden pathway. it would have been revealed to me

but instead, i am simple. less than simple; i am vacant.

eyes without a face. ears without a throat. many separate appendages which work, nominally
terminals to a soul without the beat underneath. how can i find something, anything, here to give?

and so i fall out of control of my own life. everyone around me, with generalities, exerts control without caring that they do it
and you cannot ask for communion with these controllers. you cannot object without seeming obtuse

you cannot be who you want to be. you can only be what you have done.

further, you cannot say what you have done. you cannot proclaim it; neither intention nor consequence
you can go to therapy, but you can't then go around telling everyone that you've gone

nullified, my actions, by the fact of their being unreportable. i have done nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

i'm sorry, it's the same story, always the same words, over and over again
but my truth is just that unoriginal, unchangeable, infacile. ignorant and uninspiring

i'm sorry. but i cannot apologize. one does not apologize. one does not...seek

the respectability politics of being an adult are many and diverse.
this one, he had two sons, who died. this one, his children are adopted.

no one wanted to create me. no one wants, needs, deigns to host me.
i must assert myself. i must impose myself. i must ingratiate myself.

but i don't want to do that. oh, no, it's too much work