What Could Happen If We Wait
But I'm probably overthinking it
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My world exists in a place that lies inside another place and I’m sure, though I can’t prove it, that all of this rests in a much larger space filled with lots of other little worlds all vying for somebody’s attention to justify its existence. I wonder what Stephen Hawkins would think about this? Anyway, my world, that small portion off to one corner is a nice place. Mostly green, but arid at certain times of the year. Cruel really, in the way it taunts one for no good reason at all. But what are we going to do, leave our own world? Fat chance right. Where would we go? Anyway, as I was saying, overall my world is not bad; comfortable even, when I’m not hanging upside down by my heels, whipped by hate and racism and endless chatter about who’s better and who should leave. People even raise families here, imagine, when not digging moats or erecting walls to keep out the riff raff. Are all worlds like this? I mean it makes you wonder what options are available. A whole new world perhaps, one that hasn’t had the heart ripped out of it to make room for condos or camps with barbwire décor. Yeah, I like my world, I do. I just wish others would stop trying to fix it.
I read somewhere that in the past, life on Earth happened in large, broadly defined moments, like decades or centuries. One didn’t compare last week to this week. Things evolved much too slowly for that.
No, it was more like this year compared to the one where there was a great deal of rain. Or when father’s hair was black and the elk came in great numbers.
But today, Christ, we measure things in nanoseconds. We video a hummingbird’s wings flapping in slow motion, one beat, then the next, in brilliant colors. We watch swimmers win races by three one-thousandths of a second.
We break things down. Analyze them until we can’t see the whole anymore. Like standing three inches behind an elephant’s ass and wondering what it is.
And yet with all this analytical horsepower at our disposal, we don’t see shit most of the time.
We miss a heart being broken in plain sight. We miss a part of the world going up in smoke or an institution migrating from greatness into a carnival show.
We watch the world around us like we’re at the movies and our hands are too busy making their way under Bethany’s blouse and fail to see fucking Star Wars bursting onto the screen for the first time.
What is it about Humanity that we’ve become obsessed with looking inward? To feel how we feel about ourselves, our sex lives, and our level of hunger after eating a pizza the size of a manhole cover, and fail to see the fireworks going off all around us.
The world that Nature busted her ass making for us, falling apart as rusted out Buicks replace forests and rock beds with old tires become art pieces instead of the lakes that were once there.
I wrote this poem because my world, that microscopic piece that I claim as my own, has recently begun to shrink. To lose its boundaries as other, less defined worlds encroach and impose their silliness and disrespect onto me. When did my world become theirs?
I can’t get that damn Frog in the Hot Water cautionary tale out of my head. It’s like we’re the Frog and yeah, we’re sitting in water and it’s getting hotter and hotter, and instead of being alerted to this fact and thinking, Holy Shit, better hop. We’re thinking jacuzzi and spa, and drinks being served poolside.
But that’s not what’s happening. We are not at a resort, not anymore. We once were, but we paved paradise and put up a parking lot. We lowered the bar for what’s right and decent so far down that we no longer see it.
We go along to get along because life has been made a 24/7 challenge, like that effing Ninja Warrior Gameshow that is somebody’s healthy version of Gladiators in the Roman Coliseum.
Maybe the real thing would be better on Prime Time because that would be, real. That would actually be alarming. Would actually raise one’s blood pressure and put real fear into the system. Are they going to select me next for that show?
Yeah, I get a little over the top at times – my bad – but I was alive and watching TV when lies in politics and life in general became a thing. Became newsworthy and got pretty good ratings. When wars were fought on television and the bloody bandages, we got glimpses of wasn’t corn syrup and red dye. It was the real thing.
It wasn’t fun, but it was scary. It was alarming. The President lied and lied again, under oath? Off with his head or at least off to his presidential library.
But today, it’s, yeah, yeah, well, you should listen to my ex, he lies all the time too. And that’s it.
But things are changing, and my world, our world, is all being blurred together. That is kind of scary. And it’s not just on TV. It’s out there, right now.
The thing is, I like my little world. Mostly because it’s mine. Because in it, I’m the king. Well, the boss at any rate. And that’s the way it should be.