I Don’t Have Time

To be honest though,
this is all just big talk.
High aspiration,
but disingenuous drive.
Because much of my day
is wasted on distraction,
soothing inaction.
Not holding myself accountable
to what I claim is my passion.
Toke up on nostalgia
with old video games.
Lose myself in countless clips
of silliness on YouTube.
Watch my precious DVDs
for the umpteenth time.
Just daydream voyage, about meanings of life.
About small joys scattered and said
through idealized, saccharine screenplays.
Lines read
that wishfully resemble
an over-earnest sense of purpose,
uncommon confidence,
that I hope could be mine.
But don’t trite pursuits like that
hold me back
from this, at-long-last
career path?…
… See?

I don’t have time.

My car seats –discolored and dusty, stained–
need a deep clean.
My dresser –stacks of paper, random doodads,
tied-up grocery bags, folders, receipts, masks–
disheveled and dispersed and disorganized
for months.
Yeah, that needs order.
Even writing this very poem
was a nagging, backburner idea
for many days– nah, many weeks.
Too long, too “I’ll get to it later”.
I often think
of such cup-filling things
without ever even preparing
a proper pitcher to pour
in the first place.
So much of the rest
of life’s simplest errands,
even the most menial–
I still want
to check those off,
to mark them as “Done”.
Sigh, okay.
But

I don’t have time.

Did I mention I was lonely?
Pangs of it felt, at certain searing moments–
A STOP-life red light, on the way home.
A pensive stare, into sunset sky.
An exhaling pause, in between drilling practice questions.
A rattling of silverware, as I’m just done cooking dinner
that I eat 99% by myself.
A shaky deep breath, into the pillow at night
when I finally decide to lie–
to say, “Today was enough”,
and close my eyes,
to sleep.
Oh my God, see–
I pray, I want, I need, I long for
Someone
to share
my crazy, non-fleeting feelings with.
But yeah,
(Love?),
that’s a commitment, which requires so much energy.
And yeah, you guessed it, say it with me now:

I don’t have time.

… Hold on, Simon.
Let’s flip this script.
Let’s depart from structure,
from the chains of this poem’s lattices.
Or maybe that’s too ambitious again.
But look, you see that refrain?
“I don’t have time”?
Accentuate it alternatively.
Feel it differently.
Okay, you ready?

I don’t HAVE time.

That is,
time is not mine.
It goes and goes and goes,
it’s the ultimate inertia.
To it, I pose
no challenge.
Time and space and the world
Is immeasurably beyond my senses.
Every single grain of sand, that sits alongside the sea
is more complex than I could ever imagine.
Every inch of every wave that crashes on every speck
is but an iota of a fraction of everything that keeps happening
all the time,
all at once,
in this single tiny planet
of an incomprehensibly vast universe.
Who am I to presume, to even hope,
to pinpoint,
to declare, that I’m living my best life
all the time?
Everyone is a world, including insignificant me,
paradoxically.
So what else can I even be sure of
but the metaphysical fact
that

I don’t HAVE time.

God, destiny, creation, science, love, friendships, the wind–
All of it, none of it
belongs to me.
All of experience and existence
is this mystical thing.
The world is at my feet
just as much as it’s way over my head.

So, what’s the neat little bow
to tie up my presumptuous little present of a poem here?
Okay, sure–
Plucked from the cutting thoughts knifing through my bleeding mind
all the time,
Here goes–

Only worry about what _little you can control.
And when you truly give up everything,
when you trust-fall into the formless grasp of whatever higher power or purpose you believe in,
what even is there, to worry about, at all?
When I revisit,
truly, realize
that

I don’t
HAVE
Time.