thickening skin

the flesh once worn raw and burnt with blistering
has become a lesser affliction with the aid of time
and after repeated incidents of recklessness
calluses have caused an unconscious carelessness
because the pain has become a part of the past
and not much is noticed through numbness
so once sensitive skin is sacrificed to scars

working for working

i've been so busy being busy
i've forgotten how it feels
to do something worth doing
that isn't on an endless list
of never-finished needs.

breathing thinner air

i'll admit i envy agnostics every now and then
thinking it might be nice to not know a thing
and admit it openly with honesty of insecurity
free of an impulse to feign a false sense of solidness
when really i'm worn with wavering worries
and doubts leave me considering a questioning
of the claims i make so consistently with confidence
that my faith is founded on solid ground
but my self-induced spiralling away from the frame
leads me to listlessness every now and then.

repeating how i repeat myself

i've been sticking one foot in front of the next in a systematic circle that seems concentric the way i can't connect the dots that don't come in contact with my stationary circumference that i'll never stray from as long as i long for this pattern i call progress, preferring to run in revolutions than crawl along lines for fear that i won't feel the wind on my face telling my brain it's better to add to laps as fast as i can than expand my map at slower rates or take a rest from my ritual of repeated reps around my world where quantity counts for more than meaning.

minus one, plus one

sometimes i find myself meaning metaphors
in a more literal sense than originally meant
like that time i talked about albums and how
every new release is as different as the days
that go by and change your face that i first
meant to write these lines about but now
i'm going about it in a roundabout rant
about the way words can stand for themselves
while also substituting for something else