Prompt: Strive to be happy. There is something awkward and penetrating about being alive. If you’re not careful, life becomes about striving to avoid one or the other, not about happiness. I commit 1,000 small acts of aggression against my spirit in the name of self improvement. When does it end? When am I improved enough? How will I know? If the boundaries work, but the wicked attempts to cross them never stop, how will I know when I feel good? How much more striving do I have to do, and would I know happy if it bit me in the ass? The middle class of my psyche has been erased. There are only extremes here now. A kingdom of riches I can’t reach on one end, and a ghetto soul burning in barrels at the other. Hope dangles from vines tethered to some rich man’s whims. Too many times I try to swing vine by vine across the badlands, only to discover the badlands never end, hope trickles out, the floor is lava, everything is white and dangerous, and while I am out here swinging by a striving thread, my government funds yet another genocide. Another extermination. We don’t learn. We habituate hate. That is striving, the American way. It is cuffing season, for those paying attention. Trust me when I say, we are shackled. I’m going to switch metaphors now, because all my favorite poets do when striving is their muse. It’s how the good poets write their way out, and if you haven’t already noticed, I’m striving to write my way out. I light a candle and notice the flame, but not the melting wax. In my striving, I miss the diminishment of the very thing that cups the light in its waxy fingers. People often say my poetry brings devastating truth, but always circles back to hope. I worry it won’t this time. Whatever thirst you’re here to quench tonight, don’t drink what I’m saying. I’m baiting the station with a lump of poison you’ll carry back to your nest if you’re not careful. But I promise— I’ll keep striving to be happy. My sister tells me to get my heart rate up. It’s the only thing that works, sissy. So I go into the canyon and push my body hard. I tell my therapist— outside is the only place that feels big enough to hold me. You’re not too big, she says. But this is only our 2nd session. I have not yet tsunami-ed across the shore of her office. It is coming. Striving isn’t a dancehall. It’s a dingy, single-bulb-hanging-from-a-cord back room. It frisks you at the door. Relieves you of hope. Striving reminds you that you are not yet at the understanding-it’s-a-gift portion of this box of darkness. You are just in the lidded box, and there is nothing anyone can tell you about the light that you will believe. You just strive to be known in the box, strive to find people who believe you when you tell them it is so dark, strive to get ready to be ready to be happy, pray you will know it by every name it comes by, wonder if you will notice the mercy in very thing that cups light before it melts through your fingers.
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This piece brings to mind a metaphor I have used in the past. It is like those small cans of frozen orange juice concentrate. Put it into a pitcher, add water, and it transforms into sweet flavorful orange juice, enough for a table of thirsty people. There is enough in this piece to provide a couple of fully flavored hours of wisdom and discovery for a cluster of people to enjoy.
Whoah, sister! This is the white hot truth! This post blew me away! (in a good way!)