A Learned Student
Poets aren’t prophets. Neither are essayist or writers. They’re unpopular regurgitators of the now, fed to us all by multimedia ideas and the collective conscience of the financial sanctums of corporate crap with reasons and human voices of injustice while the capitalist exploiters ponder their next move, pandering the poets hands to plunder the world of its value. All people are expendable, easily replaced, almost immediately by a younger generation being born in the predetermined mediums of society’s needs. We like to give a more popular idea of caring about people, we like to promote a human reasoning to the unnecessary conflicts. But in reality our voices go unheard. Our lives go unmended. Our words, inevitably, belong to only us. The dehumanized voices of the depressed, the mentally unsound, the drunks, the druggies, the problems of society; not its cures. Not its heeders of recognizable patterns that have stained our world’s populations since the beginning of written histories.
As a journal keeper, I am considered one of them. Although I wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for a decisive plan of a money grubbing futuristic neanderthal with a rhetorical mind to instigate a trending effort. I would be to myself only what I am. A learned student of the English language who has spent many a day among the books and magazines and newspapers of the modern world telling me all that I needed to know. I wouldn’t be a responder to the stimuli of the media eye, I would be planning meeting a new day away from the common places that surround me. I would be waking up in a comfortable paradise where my mind was eased by a gentle voice welcoming me back to our agreed upon lifestyle surrounded by the people that we love. People we want in our lives to make our portion of existence the very most that it could possibly be in away that was pleasing for us all. I would be content in my mind to consider how very accommodating those people would be. I would be satisfied with the imagination of knowing there was someone in the world who wanted those things the same as me. There wouldn’t be a harassing mob of insolent non creative performers sitting on my bedside waiting for me to be their ploy for an attention needing affirmation of their importance. My feet would feel the soft carpet there to greet them, my hands would feel the laziness of needing nothing more than a cup of coffee to comfort their resurrection from sleep, my mind would be still in a hushed silence where it was freed to enjoy those waking moments away from the pillow on my bed and I would be wrapped in the tender arms of another to guide me into my day.
Stupid poet, conceptual imitator of realities long lost, how dare you think such a ridiculous thing! You have not been categorized as a congenial thinker who can for itself, think. You are supposed to be a voice crying out to a deaf world of programmed people the needs of corporate disparities, that you yourself unknowingly play your part in. You are supposed to be a simplistic voice of reasonable anger, contrite emotions, and endless aggravations to rage and rail against the mindset of your creators who offer no condolences for their creations to prove you are not the same as them. Yet here you are. Wanting to pull yourself up by the thoughts in your mind with a beautiful face that you frequently see. Wanting to feel something besides the violinist agony of a concerto played in a low key for the simple abiding idea that you are only flesh in need of comfort. Abused flesh of many years wrapped around the ever impressionists of emotions that stir the orchestra of the minds wants to need. Need I say more? Need I explain to you again that your emotions are as invalid as a piece of notebook paper where you conjoined a victory of humanity’s goodness to nothing except your own beliefs that were later used as an assault weapon against your thinking causing you to search for yet another vision of goodness to win out over the worst that would not do the same again on any given day? Tell me again about the eyes of the woman whose mind you wanted to explore for its wealth of living done on its own away from the cameras of a persistent reality. Tell why you needed the best possible thoughts to guard your mind from the onslaught of visions you see where no one else can see. While the world takes you apart limb from limb with their declarations of “I know what you’re thinking.” Take your time. It’s all that’s left.
And oh so I would. I would pick up a blank piece of paper and tell you “that’s where you are wrong.” I’ve seen the love of the innocent in a newborn’s eyes as my own face was reflected back to me. While in all my thinking was the doubt of my own hands as to, “What do I do now?” I’ve held the hands of the frail, whose head wasn’t strong enough to lift itself, who just needed someone there to hold them while they embarked on their own first exposures of fleshly humanness becoming that day what I have been. I’ve loved those moments and a million more just like them. Where humanity was still present without regret or acknowledgement. Without needing an announcement of its being. I’ve looked into the eyes of the liars who used ancient words of caring to woo away my knowing that their speech meant nothing. I have ached for the reasonable and been tormented by the redundant for nothing more than a days worth of fresh air to breathe. I have stood between the monsters of lies and anger crying out to them both for their mercy while they acted out their plans of my emotional demise. I have been forced to walk in the footsteps of hatred on a farce march led by the unwarranted jealousies of the powerful, who turn their minds against the everyday people, for their own prophecies of we’re going to destroy you one way or the other, would you like a drink? I’ve watched the indiscrepancies of those who claim freedom belongs to us all while they take away our everyday freedoms of work, speak, and live for their own imbalance of a world they’re dividing. I’ve sat in the laughter of an audience whose lives were eased by an uncommon event that brought joy to an otherwise boring day. I’ve watched the musics of many a culture lure the thoughts of the depressed out of the gutter holes of despair to give them the ability to get through their days of mundane routines where their jobs demanded more of their lives than their health could provide. I choose to throw off the grave clothes of the would be downers to raise my thoughts to a level of abundant light shining on every face where a smile is still possible despite the indignation of their leaders. I provide myself with the comforts of knowing that in all my thinking and all my moments of languid events of nothingness that there is a better way to be myself than dressing my mind in the sackcloth of the damned. No, I’m not a poet. I’m no angel, or prophet, I’m a person fighting the influences of a belligerent society for something that is mine by rights. The ability to discern for myself what is good and acceptable in my own thoughts, in my way of wanting to live, in my own ideas of what loving is, in my personal way of needing to believe that those things can exist in the smallest of faces, in the most out of the way places, and in the things that the tyrants want no part of; such as being outside on a clear summer’s day where the air is thick with humidity and my thoughts are of ice cream. I mean after all, who wants to be responsible for someone else's happiness. Not them.
Jade Jaspers
