Poem: Issues
Author: Harper Kingsley
I get outraged and up in arms about various matters of the world
even as I grow annoyed by people trying to force their issues and concerns onto me.
Regurgitated shit is still shit, only perfumed by the vomitous source it came from
and I do not want it and I don’t care
concerned as I am by the things that matter to me.
You can try to change my mind, rewrite the person that I am and should want to be
but your efforts are fruitless, as all your yammering does is make my stubborn heart grow cold to you
and my brain shuts its doors and refuses to accept anything you say, no matter how inconsequential.
The more you say I should care, the less I do, about the things you press on me and you as well.
I look at you with empty eyes and closed ears, letting your experienced words wash away
you’ve lost me and you don’t know, caught up as you are in your news reports and casual bigotry.
The world is more than the tiny corner of it you let yourself see,
and I am not an echo of you or a continuation of you or anything to do with you, you, you,
not everything is about you, or about me, or about anyone at all.
Sometimes the world just is, with generations left gaping apart,
wallowing in different wants, needs, and fears.
You cannot change my mind, I’ll try not to change yours,
you can be you and together we’ll be the way we were, pretending at being happy,
as long as you know that I am not you. I am me.
