If I care at all, I care in this way. Naïvely, theatrically, extremely. Otherwise, I'm just kicking cans, playing word games. I've been playing them a long time. But they still don't convince me that there's a way out of this maze except not to crawl into it at all. And they don't give my casual daily conversations soul. I carry those on in my sleep.

I often feel lost in this place, as if I am a ghost wandering through dusky streets, peering in shoebox buildings, out of phase, or out of sync with something. Pretending it all makes a bit of sense. I suppose that's why I'm someone who makes things up. That's my job, that's what I'm good at. Dreaming.

I came into being at a primitive time. I don't understand why in this world, greed is always stronger than humility, or the most brutal are rewarded with so many spoils. The rot of man's spiritual ignorance and atrophy creeps into so many lives in so many lands. Us humans with our grand illusions. We are but fume-crazed animals, replaying the obvious, nosing in our own excrement, dont know enough to stop lapping up the antifreeze.

Tomorrow, I will dance to the rising sun, dance with the rising sun. Nothing gives me more joy than to see a sunrise, again. That's why I am out of bed before dawn each day. Nothing can move me like the simple colors that the sun coaxes from a waking sky. And at the same time, I forgive all those who walk into oceans, or thick fogs, who lose their minds, or otherwise excommunicate themselves from this diseased core. I even forgive those who submerge themselves in illusion, dissolve their memory. Get fat on distraction, or turn away from the things they once had the courage to see. I am tired, even this young. I'm losing the energy to judge.

Still. It will always be stunning to me that we don't all run screaming from this poisonous abstraction. One day, I will you see. One day I'll be gone. There'll be nothing at this keyboard, no battery, no outlet, no chair. No email address, no mailing address, no nothing. No more citizen. I'll be in the woods, in the desert, in the jungle, in the mountains. Who knows? It will be a day I no longer have anything to prove to you. Myself, I'm already convinced. Now I'm just gathering fuel and lore.

Some will be surprised, so sure I was being dramatic all the while. The pretentious poet prone to hyperbolic prediction. Most who've known me any amount of time will probably just smile and look to the window for a moment.

They'll know.