Headphones dead, a long time ago this would bother me.
This would make me isolate in audio
This would make me write religiously, unreligiously.
This would make me doubt gravity
or think gravity is on top of me.

But things haven’t changed.
But they definitely haven’t stayed the same,
From my name being nameless from
sanity insane, to sanity back again,
to brain, body connection, to connection
in the space I exist in.
The world is a magician
if you feel that kind of thing.

So I sit with these feelings
and can understand the feeling,
the want, to leave the planet,
the want of unexisting.
But persistence is the key I wield.
Tell it to my offspring.
Tell it to my cerebral cortex
that governs my thinking.
Think that things get better.
Think angels sing in unison.
The gravity of being human
from mental imprisonment, let freedom ring.

I hear the songs viscerally.
speak to me your frequency.
I can hear synchronicity in the pain you speak.
I can see the trees for the city
and the city for the trees.
You might not exist, but you exist to me.

I am not a miracle, but I believe you might be.
I can see something in you that you might not see.
Even if I can’t see it in me, I see you, I can hear you,
and I want to know I am with you.

I want you to know that there was a time
when homebound I wasn’t.
When I lost my cousin to a brain injury in 2003.
How my nephew decided he wanted to silence his pain
and I will never talk to him again.
I want to let you know that I have scars
on my wrists, made spiritually, purposefully.
I want to let you know the voices I carry, I still carry.
I want to let you know that the world
was scary, and still can be.

Can I tell you a little story?
I can sit with you, if you let me.
Just yesterday, I was writing to find some purpose,
Some meaning, I remember drinking
on the weekend, cigarette feen, weed feening,
Finding some meaning in the machine dreaming.
Waking up with sertraline in my system screaming.
Wondering the meaning.

I still wonder, but I exist
because I persist to find it.
To wonder the world, and what is behind it.
I listen to Dilla to sidetrack my system,
The backwards thinking, still wondering
my reason for existence.

But Perseverance Over Everything, POET,
I tattooed resilience on my left arm.
It reminds me that the heartbeat
beats till it doesn’t, that there is some charm
to the mystery of me,
to the mystery of you, to the mystery of this
vessel we call human.

I don’t know what the meaning of it is.
Maybe we can sit with this.

Find meaning in existence.
Find beauty in persistence.
Something like tenacity and resilience
Mixed with the beauty of finding love.
Is love the cure for mental illness?

I once played victim, but I have
to put that part of me and sit with it,
let it rest for a minute,
just sit down for a second.
Take space and breathe in
and know a poem isn’t finished.
And some times its ok, to stop sit with silence
and listen.

So tell me friend, how are you feeling?
Thanks for giving me a minute.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His third book, Train of Thought 2: Almost Home is available now at the Oddball Book Store.