Poem: 91
Sunday, 26 February 2017
Brave coffee
When the bravest thing we do
Is get coffee, it requires poetic imagination
To be a hero in this safe, clean, profitable, nice, comfortable modern life
The biggest problem is that
There are no problems
No real ones anyways
Except this
We numb ourselves to sleep
With Netflix, Spotify, video games, alcohol, socially acceptable addictions
Or perhaps those less acceptable
A mass exodus, McGonigal’s reality is broken, leaving the real world
For these worlds of imagination
Not because they are happier places, where the lords and ladies live happily ever after
But because they are dramatic, dangerous and daring romances of the human spirit
Where villains sometimes win, and heroes tragically die trying
But isn’t that a better fate than this grey comfort
The real reason I’m addicted to this screen, is that I’m too afraid to see
These headphones are my cigarettes, because I’m too afraid to talk
This keyboard is my defense, because I’m too afraid to go on offense
To tell you how I really feel, to ask for what I want, to name the rawest problem
To not leave my life as a draft, but to rather create flawed things than exist in static anticipation of perfection
We are bored, but is it because the world is boring, or because we are boring, and we have made the world in our image? A world we are too comfortable with. A world of manners, but not of men. A world of rewards, but not of risk.
This reality is exciting. Abandon these childish things. And we will play together, delighting in this novel of dystopian purgatory we find ourselves cast in. We are the heroes and we will break out.
We have satisficed our way to a local optimum of decadently comfortable misery.

