For a time in my adolescence
I was once a poet, complete
with the requisite pretensions
and condescension that comes therewith;
I could distill the world around me,
and reconcile it with the world inside me;

Sometimes, I look back and have to cringe;
at fifteen, my facilities as an observer
far surpassed my ability to express that which i observed,

attempting to coax the complexities
of an existence i had no way of understanding
into a defining statement;
At the time, it felt as if i was succeeding.

These days, It's the other way around;
I am fully equipped
to articulate the nuances and themes
that constitute my consciousness

but the older i get
the less i care about these
nuances and themes,
and the less i can see why anyone else might, either.

As a poet you have to be convinced that
your personal universe is important to others;
narcissism, ugly as it is, drives all creation
and when I came to the understanding that
my experience is worth no more than any other
(or less, for that matter)
I could no longer find the will to say
much of anything.

Words come out at right angles, obfuscating
any meaning that might come from it.

The point is no longer in expressing anything;

I spend infinite days searching for intricate ways
of saying nothing at all;

judge my failure as a success
or my success as a failure.

07/24/2011

Posted on 07/24/2011
Copyright © 2026 Andrew S Adams