The Gap Year

365 days

Has it really been one full year

Since my last, arbitrary first of October?

And what have I done with this time?

Nothing

My heart has spent 30 to 40 million beats

And for what?

I have wasted each minute

Living in stasis

But!

I must find one act worth remembering

I’m willing to dig

I cut a slit in my scalp to pull the gunk aside

Then I split my skull

And take a peek inside

365 days laid bare

Never one mark made

And the only lines I’ve gained are the ones upon my face

Drifting:

A naked, fat disgrace

Orbiting all alone

In one cold corner of space

The rest of ya’ll made your big trip around the sun only to come back

And find

I haven't moved at all

I’m still here!

Right here

Exactly where I’ve been

Drooling on my couch

Doing so little

That watching the rain counts as a thrill

But… ah… back to my dry, rattling cranium

This is the Big Empty

Splayed for you and for easy viewing

A yawning hippocampus

An empty amygdala

Cobwebs in my cerebral cortex

And the halls between these derelict chambers are all shriveled dendrites and dust

But wait!

Beneath the shadows I spy a glimmer!

Is that something I have done?

Is that something I can hold with pride?

Look closer now

It’s just some… thing

The sickly, pallid sheen

Of an

E

N

D

L

E

S

S

L

Y

S

C

R

O

L

L

I

N

G

S

C

R

E

E

E

E

E

EE

EEE

EEEEE

(n!)

And yes I intend that as some factorial shit

Because this failure is quite grand

I do not believe there is a lesson to be had

But if you say there is then I am ready to…

Ignore it

There are yet some truths I dare not admit,

Some comforts I’ll never forfeit

I’m simply too weak to say

“I have wasted another year”

But oops

I said it, the truth is here

I’ve spent twelve months plucking my lashes until my lids went bald

Twelve months! All in practicing the art of

Atrophy

Do not hype me up

With any thing I can boast

Because no….

If you raise a toast, let it be to the rare productivity of a carcass

So, hear, hear!

To my gap year

This year of doing fuck all

To 6,000 waking hours pissed down the drain

And the rest spent drifting, from dream to dream,

Idling and vacant

Not a single promise met!

This isn’t self-deprecation

Nor exaggeration

Never a lie

All I’ve said is plain to the eye

For what did I do?

I worked

I ate

I blathered like an idiot

I loved a few and I longed to love others

But what does that matter?

Because the phone in my hand is the proof I am bland:

More a zombie than a brother

I spend a whole fucking year

As though sloth were some noble mission

Sitting right here

Staring at my own backlit, pixel prison

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

But what of our toys: our daily Apples and our Androids?

Is our tech really keeping us under?

I don’t know about you!

but I for one am over-fed and under control!

Just one

Of several billion

Human voids

Another black hole, living on autopilot

And doing nothing

Unless it can be done vicariously

365 days

An entire year utterly wasted

And this marks the 36th

Where all I did was exist

Not placid! Just complacent