A Moment That Will Never Come
/It feels like
I’ve been preparing
My entire life
For a moment that will never come
My body is tense
My mind is sharp
Yet I have nothing to do
With such focus
There is no enemy to fight
No emergency to survive
No monumental struggle to overcome
Nothing other than this day
And the next and the one after that
What glory is there to be found
In the daily grind?
How can I be proud of defeating
The mere anxiety of surviving the moment?
. . .
I crave catastrophe
And ache for the apocalypse
Not as a nihilist
But as a person without purpose
There’s little joy to be found in a job
Creating just to consume
Producing just to procreate
Done daily until death
I am a man without meaning
Readying myself for revelation
When survival isn’t assured life is serious
The useless artefacts will fall away
What actually matters will materialise
Focus will be forced towards functionality
Distracting decadences will be discarded
Leaving nothing but the struggle of life
Perhaps then I’ll find real purpose
Maybe existence will feel equanimous
. . .
How privileged
Am I
To lament
The ease of my life
I am blessed
To have never seen war
Or suffering
I am blessed
Yet that blessing
Feels like a curse of meaning
Without an enemy to fight
Without an obstacle to overcome
All this feels dulled
Life feels like a shadow
A mockery of everything I was promised
Thus I create my own demons
Faceless oppressors
That cannot be seen
Or overcome
Then I cry about my problems
Like they actually exist
Writing angsty poems
From a place of privilege
. . .
As a child
I learnt
Vigilance
To survive
I slept light
A knife under my pillow
Waiting for an attack
That attack never came
But I still sleep light
And have made my body into a weapon
I am still vigilant
Waiting for the attack
That will never come
This poem is from the book, ‘A Requiem For What Could Have Been: Poetry For The Broken’.
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