Everything Is Shit

A common rooftop holds a dusty grey old telescope

Whose eye has captured glimpses humanity could have never witnessed by itself

It’s sits there on the roof, unfazed by the wind, calling out to the stars

Like a ghost, calling out from the grave

Like a forgotten memory, scratching the surface of the mind

Like the last dinosaur, calling out to the remains of its kin

And so the telescope senses its doom, in a peculiar sense

What fate worse than to be an ugly vessel used to see pretty stars

What fate better than to have one’s own composition overlooked for the cosmos

And what fate better or worse than to be the worthless human

Standing behind the vessel.

The dusty grey old telescope

It does not know how to be human, but an observer it does

It’s time ends only when the universe does

So it is safe to say, that it is timeless, for now

But for cruelty’s sake, let’s say that it’s shallow purpose ends with the death of humanity

Because if not for the shallowness of the act

Its just a scrap of metal, an invention forever seeking its Maker

Whether the Maker be the Cosmos or Humanity

Whether it be the living or dying

Or simply the fools who try to seek, salvage and lock beauty

The telescope stays there

Bound by the bound one to look up at the binding one.

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This poem was written from the viewpoint of anything or anyone who has felt neglect and love simultaneously at the hands of people. The telescope or, the people pleaser’s only purpose is to reflect and show and perform, never to step into the light itself, never to break free from the greedy, hungry eye that looks into it to see the beauty of the universe, something which the eye may not even deserve.

To really immerse in this poem, think of yourself as a telescope who is conscious of itself. You can do nothing but be placed on the ground, your neck is adjusted and forcefully pushed up or pushed down so that your face points towards the sky, your eyeball taken out and then quickly put back in after some adjustment as you almost go blind looking at the scorching brilliance of the universe. Your buttons are pushed, you are used, you are looked in to, you are nothing but an instrument, nothing but a means to something grander, something better.

Once you can imagine yourself like this, it is not hard to feel sympathy for yourself, in times when you let people destroy you, use you, abandon you the same way telescopes are dealt with. People pleasers, I know this one will hit hard.

The mother watched her daughter grow up as she did, she was aware of the calamity that would soon befall her as it did on her and she was aware of the struggles her daughter would face because that’s just how the world is. Yet, she gulps all that down and kisses her daughter’s cheek. The kiss marks the last imprint of love the child will ever have as she grows up to be a woman. That imprint contains for her courage, strength and most of all, a mother’s empathy. It contains her maternal ancestors existing in her, though diluted and faded. Now the daughter watches as she looses her freedom as a human being and watches herself morph into what her husband and child desire. She cooks meals that please her husband, she washes clothes for her family, she tends after her child with all the love of a mother and all the duty of a parent. She dresses according to how it is taken in society, doing everything for others, nothing for herself. She sometimes wipes the floor clean just to see her reflection and get reminded of her mother. She kneads dough and sees the blue veins on her water riddled hands in a new light. When she washes her face every morning, she finds herself hesitating against all logic to not wash that cheek of hers which her mother had kissed. It was a mark for the daughter to carry as she lives each day, facing the real world, with the only place filled with love and purity for her being that spot on her cheek that her mother had left . Because she knew long before her daughter did how all of this would turn out. Now mother in the grave, unaware and listless and daughter in the world, breathing and more aware than ever, the only link remaining between them being the one single kiss all those years, lay and rest disturbed but united eternally.

There’s nothing particularly sad about it. That’s how fleeting life is and how long lasting human connection is. People say it’s nothing to fear, nothing to feel strangely upset about. Because this is ordinary.. This is a book we live in that will never end. And all kisses are crying kisses which will never show their tears.