The drill

All must vanquish the struggle presented by their own existence
The rivalry between their own body and essence,
The requirement we are demanded to fulfil,
So to belong, so to blend in, so to fit in.

So be it. We all know the drill.

To adapt, to adjust, to tweak
Not just to survive but to succeed
And don't we all want to be, by someone, loved?
And by that love being warmed with pride
For the masterful disguise we managed
To achieve,
Slowly surrendering to the worship of
all the things we are not seen to be.

As a child, I was a few pounds too large,
As a teen, a tad too obsessed with scales,
weighing every gram
That would thin me to slim,
All the while, a few inches too short
And decisively not the beau or the jock,
a second place medal , lukewarm.
As a boy, I grew a few facial features
too many
for not
being the adopted son,
As a man, I was only a little accent
away
from not
being one more immigrant,
All along, at a loss,
not synchronised
With the places, the time, the faces
outside
And my timid voices within,
Shy of words and by nature
To sketch, dismiss or admit
all those too many hats,
discrepancies,
The entries of a matrix
I was only there to silently
observe,
Rows and columns,
Numbers combined
Apprehended in rules
That did not become me.

I am still to vanquish the rivalry presented by my own existence,
Homosexual but not gay enough
Is an amusing corollary,
Italian but not quite
the painful lemma,
Where
It is
That I am
really
from
The postulate and the original sin.
So many theorising
The process, the method,
It's never a drill,
I repeat that in my head
Like a prayer,
Bead by bead,
Rows and columns,
Every number a knot,
Every knot a good answer,
Every answer a mystery:
Joyful, luminous,
Sorrowful, glorious.
And a mystery might shun the nosy
With dazzle,
Gift again with posture and stance
the roaring muteness that in thoughts
Wanders,
Clutching to scrapes, of rags ragged
Like overgrown nails feed
On dead flesh I am
A person without resemblance of roots
A child worried of the man he'll grow up to be,
A worried man for what of that child has been left alive.
Of the disguise, the quandary and curse,
I shall wear my best clothes:
a good son,
a fine man,
a ''normal'' person
Never a nuisance to those whom I love
I have learnt how to remove myself when,
Dried out,
I'm just excess.
Just to belong, just to blend in, just to fit in.

And that's where I'm at.
I'm left with the drill,
The numbers, the beads.
Under the nails, debris.

To adapt, to adjust, to tweak
Not just survive but to feel somehow I've got by,
Oblivious to the fact that twenty years after
Pubescent nights of reading poems
Like reading tarots to better stars
I will try and name all those absconding alternative selves
To a stranger:
Orbits, planets and maps
To infinite ends,
Theories
Tethered in the tangled nerves
Of the depleted mind
Slouching on a Velcro couch
another hundred people sat on
Before me,
All grasping for that unique connection,
The ultimate dot,
Like sliding fingers through the folders
Of life,
Looking for the birth certificate
of our first pain when there is none,
The alpha and the omega of all our fears,
Insecurities, ill choices, bad mornings,
Microwave dinners, overcooked rice,
Repetitive chores and cheap beers,
The first invisible wound that brought us
Tears.

Formidable opponents we are to ourselves,
Birds of prey to public slander
Sycophants of the popular opinion
When is of us thus required,
All acolytes to a traumatised history,
Experiments, offspring of deities,
Unproven theorems
Wailing for that moment of epiphany,
The harbinger of serendipity.

But who will look after us now
That we've been found out,
if not ourselves ?
An inch taller, a stone lighter,
A tone blonder, a shade darker,
A tad deeper, a little faster,
Caged a wee tighter,
Like precious pearls
In a rosary bead,
one life after
The other.

Fuck the drill.

By ©Roberto C. Salvador 2021

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