The Question

Hell if I know where this is going.
Hell if I know anything.
I act like I do—call it survival.
Maybe it’s theater,
maybe it’s my weird way of saying,
”Hey, don’t panic, folks, I’ve got this mystery wrapped up.”
Or maybe I’m just a jackass
trying to keep the darkness at bay.

The truth?
There’s a darkness in me,
a real sonofabitch,
and I’ve stared it down long enough to know—
it doesn’t leave,
but it learns to sit quiet,
like a dog waiting for scraps.

I spend my time here
wherever here is
killing minutes before the big gate swings open.
The final curtain.
The showstopper.
And I used to think it was vain to want the stage,
the spotlight.
“Ego,” they’d sneer. “Self-indulgence.”

Screw that.
I was born for it.
Not for the fame,
not for the cheap claps and autographs,
but for the magic
to take their stares,
their gasps,
their fragile, raw hearts
and make them feel something.
Anything.

But the magic leaks out sideways.
Too many ideas, too little focus.
I’ve scattered myself into mediocrity.
Good at everything,
master of jack shit.

And the music,
God, the music.
It sits there, a trapped animal
howling, scratching.
I feel it in my fingers.
Joints burning
of arthritis.

Instead, I paint.
I tried painting.
It bored the hell out of me.
The canvas,
a smug little square,
laughing at me.
The magic isn’t in the damn brush
it’s in the spark between souls.
Eyeballs meet eyeballs.
Hearts collide.
That’s the stuff.

Now I’m full to the brim.
Overflowing.
Every nerve in me buzzes like a broken neon sign.
I’m pouring it out to you,
all of you,
a teenage kid again,
dropping the skateboard, the basketball,
but this time not for girls.
This time,
just to feel alive again.

The tongue is new.
The spoken word,
a tool,
a weapon,
a damn lifeboat in this storm.
But a tongue needs weight,
needs roots.
You can’t just let it float like some helium balloon
babbling nonsense to the stars.

No
it needs dishes done,
bills paid,
neighbors waved at,
arguments walked away from.
The real dirt.
The muck.
The grime of humanity.

Maybe that’s the trick.
Stop asking questions.
The brain
that asshole accountant
loves to file and categorize,
divide and conquer.
Why this? Why that?
Why even bother?

But the gift is the gift,
and you either use it,
or it rots in the box.
A baseball bat can be a home run
or a funeral bell.
The difference is in how you hold it.

I’ve been in the game long enough to know:
the rules don’t matter.
The score doesn’t count.
But the innings
they’ll drag you around before they kill you
or teach you something.
I’ve been kicked, beaten,
but I’ve rounded the bases a few times.

And you know what?
I’m still here.
Still learning.
Still trying to be less of an asshole
and maybe
just maybe
make this world less of a bad trip.

Stop asking why.
Stop asking how.
The questions are the prison bars.

We’re here to play.
To walk the tightrope between light and dark,
day and night,
sun and moon.
Two sides of the same coin,
flipping in the air,
never landing.

And maybe that’s it
the light switch flicks on,
then off,
then back on again.
And in between
in the flicker
that’s where the infinite lives.

To be or not to be?
That’s the wrong damn question

From here at least.