June 4, 2012

30 in 30 Poetry Edition, Day 4: Anticipation

By Daniel

Anticipation
The feeling preceding the letdown,
Impatiently waiting for your spot at the top of the slide,
Just so you can fall back to earth.

When is it not pessimism talking, but experience?
When do I get to say I’m not pessimistic, just well-weathered,
Turned cynical by a world that’s equal parts reality TV marathons and polarized politics?
It’s Election Day, you know.

Why is the poem in my head always superior to what you end up seeing?
Anticipation.
If I put shoes on my elbows and knees so I can run just after learning to crawl,
Is that close enough?
Am I enlightened yet?

If I think the mind is a well that will never run dry of thoughts, materials, poems,
Am I naïve, dangerously optimistic, or just wise beyond my years?
You’ve done four poems in five days, good for you.
That’s worth a gold star, for sure.
What about five weeks? Five months? Five years? Five centuries?
In the year 2379 will I be a brain in a jar hooked up to a word processor,
Processing pickled knowledge that I output as ASCII with an EOF control character when it’s apparent that I’ve run out of ideas?
Isolated and disconnected from the world that’s changed, changed again,
but yet is still nothing but fucking reality TV marathons and polarized politics?