by: Avery Lin
[4:01 a.m.] Rise victim again to corporeal upbraiding
congealed at the hairline, whisked from equivocal unconsciousness:
incapable of transcending or subjugating these prosaic nuisances
to the inconsequential or the mechanical
…Must shower, tripping in the spurious dark through the
mine of Whole Foods crumbs and ravaged cardboard to the
stoic glass tomb, an irreligious vessel of delirious rumination,
anti-transformative stasis and the tortured crystallization of the same;
Lather the mind with the ingenuous stench of jasmine cloying
with the quixotic promise of oblivion, wafting in the
conviction of this inexorability of noxious habit
(my canned latte, the sham antidote to exhaustion, waits in the fridge),
slip out burnished and subdued, steam-pummeled;
Unspooling erratically on the mattress thoughts scattering
from the mental bank, crystallizing into signs I won’t interpret.
[7:57 a.m.] The sun is ingratiatingly cheery today,
insinuating that
I am late again!
through the exposed window pane
(I have stopped draping it as it ridicules my time), an apathetic
witness to a cynical city and my solitary world
forty stories above-ground painstakingly crafted,
confusing mental drama with life;
I crinkle papers in a pretentious bag,
frenetically arrange scrupulous thoughts with apologetic prefaces
scheme how to speak spontaneously with modulated reticence
…Squirming with earnest, avoiding eye contact,
scoring my palm where no one’s curious gaze falls with the
simmering anxiety of a tryout.
[4:01 p.m.] The academy is assuringly behind again,
its self-importance belittled by the sardonic haze of the Hudson River;
I am barrelling in an anonymous car
towards the lofty home and its thorny cradle
…Submit to the tub with tepid relief,
scrape the underbelly of the porcelain shrine
that ennobles this insincere quitting
I will work twice as long tomorrow
romanticizes the hackneyed fantasies
I will emerge enlightened from a yoga retreat
legitimizes the blindered thinking and self-indulgent wallowing
…Suppress the primordial visions of carefree youth
when did it become like this?
indulge in the shallow solace
embrace the now in the name of the future!
inculcate the permeable mind with the worthy aim of optimizing,
mature the girlish escapism into empowered womanhood:
Starting tomorrow I will kill these trivial neuroses
find inner peace in a meditation book,
deliver the dormant child from pathological diligence:
Find the absurd joy, the perverse beauty in this debilitating system
Be grateful, and but unlock your potential!
[7:57 p.m.] I saw a film for school
about three city urchins bluffing towards a cataclysmic end
with their greasy smirks and malignant banter, their tragically
misguided masculinity but all I could think was
how arrestingly alive they are how magnetically they move,
these condemned kids spared from the farcical tragedy of controlled life:
Who would never self-impose internment
besides a sun-bleached window,
time flattened to the tapping of keys
to a numbing mental buzz in a sterile room
only mind no body
too busy to behold the sunset
is the coffee working?
life transpiring outside unwitnessed
Who would never wonder
how can I ever
reach a higher level of self-deception?
[12:31 a.m.] Sometimes I wish
that I didn’t have to preface statements try so hard to be
authentic affect all these smiles cling so hopefully
to the optimist’s rock
believe unconditionally in the my future,
in myself
[1:11 a.m.] I’m so close to being the girl woman
I’m always becoming:
I glimpse her sidelong in the others’
alluring self-possession, in their
effortless empathy and endearing confidence,
that attractive disposition of being at home in oneself,
not this blistering tension
[1:12 a.m.] But how many setbacks am I allowed
before I transcend pass the precipice
at which I’m always arriving
[1:13 a.m.] They’ll murmur in the echo chamber in the ether
that I had all the tools (so self-aware!) but lost the manual;
Write impressive prose about why I didn’t just embrace the cyborg
like all the other smart ones (change the script if I couldn’t accept it)
wonder if there was anything actually wrong
or just another attention-seeking literary schema?
[6:01 p.m.] Mental Notes:
Go to sleep! get up early
Don’t drink coffee! don’t be neurotic
Clean room! edit poem
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