Life isn't suffering.

Least not for everyone.

I believe everyone has their own shit, but some people are meant to scoop said shit.

For me, it's a balance.

A metronome at good and evil, pain and pleasure all based on a limited perspective.

This current view from a young adult mind that doesn't feel too adult.

People have always had hopes and dreams--mines were lost decades ago and now I'm bitter at everyone else.

"Look at them...going places with their eyes bright and their passion"

Last time I had some I was told to "lay off" the words "I love you" the game I'm forced to play.

I'm a mystery man without the dark past.

Boring

or not

I was never told.

Moderately high walls of brick, dusty, warm to the touch, coated with moss on the entry and exit points; gates forged long ago, never refurbished or reenforced, now rusted in fair weather. Diem, a place you've been to, a place I've been too, shamelessly unremarkable but a landmark for it's history: implicit and barely known in even the oldest minds. Tourist come and go through narrow streets, chaotic, driven here by a beauty forgotten and away from evidence it was better this way. From the east to the west, the north to the south, not a cloud in the sky or a resident lacking smiles. Not a thing to do in this quiet town, mayhap that's where we're wrong. Where the ancient architecture from the plain one-story houses to the statues of heroes passed fail, the chapels, the cathedrals, the places of spiritual enlightenment and community are very much alive. It lives through the people, at first hesitant to speak on that inner why, brought up and respected, discussed with a nuance many deem impossible, yet coming from the collective itself. The peeking grass through sometimes clear, sometimes stone, and other time muddy cobble adding depth, adding a flower to every exploration along side a new path--endlessly providing entertainment in spite of similarities in the corridors. They broaden further in, wide and spacious, vacant for the most part aside from the casual chirping intruders. Questions, theories of the spectacles seen stir primary impressions, molding them to complex, sharp shapes with a new monastery, temple, organization bound in this unspoken harmonious brotherhood. Magic, fortune, traditions with no origin, enlightening and engaging tales with no novel, broken and almost demolished artifacts abandoned--undisturbed all accumulate into a silent, yet sound culture; nothing losing or vacant of value, yet feeling better off the way they are found. It's beyond a mutual respect for the place. Most never understand the origin of their aloofness, the eye of the world is left a notable mark in finding peace with the mystery that is themselves, the town, and the world around them.

[Opening]

Born outta sin, singled out for the fringe

Soul my soul for the world, on certificate; Can’t

Stroll to the end, cold case to be in

Goal gaining distance, so I’ll roll for a friend

Goading attention in the sunshine

Looked for a long time till my eyes start to fry

Land of the sun ain’t no peace signs

Don’t slack on your stripes or you never gon fly

[Hook x2]

Chillin’ in the heat with our hearts full of ice

We was waitin’ on Christ

I was tryna be right

Sheathing the light

They were seething despite

All the words that you spoke, yo all of us bite.

No bark, cut palms, glades burn in the night

That’s tight, theme song, you know that I like

Been cryin’ my state seems somethin’ like a briar

If you don’t know you won’t know yo, yo,yo

[Hook]

Watchu say? Watchu say?

Think you want a taste?

Better let it bake, playing games those screens

Biltz poor tendency

and diss goal energy

Affixed off the super e

Affixed, Affixed

[Verse]

You was drunk off the fluency

A monk school of cardi B

Amuck with stupidity

A bust tryna ruin me

A bud sore of scrutiny

That tact nothin' new you see they use to call me rocky but my status heal like wolverine

Dutifully, tasked with my ancestors

Eulogy, fresh off the dna and paper

What a dream, lit with the dimmest of tapers--it ain't all what it seems can I pull this caper?

"___ Don't sin!"

We out our minds if we live life like this

All of these avenues cognitively rid

I'm with the shits, if you're in then I'm in, if you're in then I'm in, dog.

(Hook)

Steely gaze leaves the gape stuck Been above but browsing for the wrong one The summit forged some tough stuff Back to waves, back away you won’t wash up Don’t strafe on it Can’t stay runnin’ now Don’t strafe on it Bad taste in a kiss Don’t strafe on it That gaze got you now Don’t strafe on it For a few more seconds

(Verse)

Defeat on feats can’t Love I’m tired

Leaf on beats prone to the pyre

Stuck behind the wire yo numbness seem to split the world

Rose and gold, seen it in a rope, hang or should I go

Blisters bustin’ out my tomes

Mirror mirror all I know

Got no prose Got no show

(Hook)

(Verse 2)

What a load

Of bullshit

Always wanna talk never step up to the

pulpit

Always got ya jaw runnin’

why they run ya spot

Always fillin’ in the dots, for the thots, that don’t think

Bout you on the brink

Do you want release

Lot less of a beast when you got a whiff of peace

Whatchu want, whatchu need Lately I don’t see a me-overbearing

Caring,

loving, bitch we ain’t married

Bitch you ain’t mary

Half me peppered into ya

Dark as it was the centers cusped

Bouncing the light like tennis court

Marital devotion Kept marching when hope end Ed up with no context And singing bout bomb head.

I was going Winston for a minute

Smile was like music to my psyche

Why the volition don’t like me Mediate the cores that’s excessive egcision

In the center of a black room stood nappy black man pacing the floor. Corner to corner, he held his chin and glanced out the window, rectangular with a slider announcing the option to shut himself from the world. The furniture's color eluded him, outside of the ray's reach and made up of contrasting styles from different eras. His bed wasn't even bed, more of mattress on stilts, and his door was so thin it seemed painted on--black with tears of a shabby paintjob trailing off the sides.

I hide my books, I hide my hands, I hide my thoughts. I hide my touch, I hide my views, I hide my heart. I hide regret and regret that I regret. I hide to hide but the light always finds me here. Every night the moon, new or full, keeps me up and aware of how empty this pursuit is. I reflect to understand the world, losing more of my identity through conflicting thoughts. My table is covered in notes, notebooks, and inkless pens. Caps litter the floor beneath the bed, just out of sight from me and any other eyes. Somehow, I'm afraid of other eyes from all the way up here, looking down at the ants of society, brave enough to engage or risk failure. How long can I convince myself to stay here? I wonder this every time I enter, couped up for weeks on end.

He feels empty, ironically, full of himself. Smart, above it all, like the outlier who'll make something of himself while the social school flounders. Three pictures peak out a slit in his mattress of his family and girlfriend, both which he hasn't seen for equal amounts of time. He feels like a hypocrite, stupid to assume a single human has the philosophical, psychological, and spiritual answers the world needs--knowing all too well how they stemmed from other realms, heads, and mouths. Sometimes he doesn't feel at all, watching and waiting for someone to care. Knock on his door or call his dead phone.

"No, that would be awful."

Why would anyone want that?

This room would be what I need, simultaneously what I don't. The introspection quickly morphed into hyperconsciousness: overthinking in this small room. I don't know if I'd be better off in a bigger room. I wonder if I'd want to leave that too.

Window are out. Old fashioned and in need of renovation. We couldn't say we've been the greatest to them, what with all the crashing and fractals we lay into them, but we do our best to make them pretty.

Amalgam of roughness, rectangular wrath pent up and arrested. Why couldn't we be stuck in some foundation, lifting up the glass, the people instead of being a convenient source for violence. What an awful rep we have. We tough it out covered in goop, from scarlet to pink, unbothered on the outside and keeping it all locked up. I wonder sometimes if that hot stereotype was to ward others, our diligence and firmness mistaken for aggression. We watch you everyday wanting to hold you between us. Billions of us. Molded, plastered, and frozen in time. Would it kill ya to say: "Hey"

I should write this down. He said that to himself leaving the school bus, not too happy about the home he was headed for. Up the steps and in the door, he passed the man slumped over the couch, looking at him through cloudy eyes and foggy glasses. What was he doing all day? You could never tell with fathers, uncles, cousins.

Fresh on my mind and flooding my wrist, I went to work on my first few stories, only having the base idea without knowing where I was headed. A story starter, not a story finisher. You see, writing, this type of writing, was something I did for fun, once upon a time. Right now? When I'm depressed, it feels like an obligation, a task that I must do to solidify that I can indeed write. The prospect of it being a skill, expression, and activity all come to me now with the head loaming over the rest. He's been trying to answer that question when he wanted to write stories again, to become an author or something like that. Why? It was something to do at one-point, now? It's an identity I've created for myself. I am a writer. Writing is what I do. Often I look forward to what I'll write so much I forget the point of doing it. And sometimes I get so envious the enjoyment and love leaves the pen. That bittersweetness, when you show it off to someone weighs on you, but you only recall the negative reactions. The biases and thoughtfulness around it.

At that time, he didn't know why he wrote and didn't bother to ask. Now, he has a time where he writes, works, sleeps, and eats--ironically--with more time to jot. Writing let's his overwhelming thoughts and insecurities quell, turning that overthinking to deep introspection, making challenges less challenging. Reading was his first love, listening was innate. When the two intersected, the story became the reason he wrote. Detangled one by one, his flaws and strengths came to surface, a method for replying in his writing since he had few he would talk to. To him he is a writer, or to frame it accurately, writing was inevitable.

He smiled into the notebook paper, reading it over in his head then out-loud. It didn't turn out how he thought it would, so he left notes and lines all over it; it was time to start over.