Not Really Living Poem by Julia Luber

Sometimes I have to write a poem in the morning, just to wake up.
There is no other point.

For some inexplicable reason, I just don't quite yet have the aggression
it takes to live a valid day of life.

A lot of poets write poems to cultivate peace and a state of calm through
which their days will have a moment to rest.

And I don't know how often I write poems to create a sense of peace. Not
so often.

I write poems to get my nerve ends functioning like a time-piece. With all
the different components somehow working, ticking, actuated.

Sure, I've written a poem here and there in a half state of abstract dreaming,
abstract living, even more abstract feeling and emotion.

But isn't that what it takes to live life as what so many understand it to be:
detachment from something is quintessential.

And engagement to something else happens by so many measures. A poem,
the phone ringing, noises, noises, sounds to startle one from

something that has eked a kind of sleep inside, even while awake. As if one
accepted their own death while it was that they were sleeping.

And in that acquiescence to something out into the future, a dimension of the
mind and body went. Flew. Ran. Walked. Whatever.

However one got to that distant land of death. And abiding by something
stronger than oneself.

And then each tick of this time clock called living this day starts to motivate
and impose something, if not stronger than death, perhaps at least a seductress

of it. Captivating it in its succubus jaws, its targeted compendiums of consciousness.
Noting coincidences and whatever magical gems and jewels of existence

one can catapult to a meaning of living and the recalcitrant reckoning vitality demands.
And so if it were roses or chocolates, perhaps a holiday would be declared.

But today is not a holiday. And I am more than just half asleep. Numb from what it was
that my tears and stamina avenged without avengement.

No tongue drawn to the roof. No finger raised. No hand waving for an answer to a
question. Because these days, there are no questions. And it is only

the trance of an authority and dominance and luck that reels the bait of life back into
its establishment. And perhaps it means that I do not write poems

to be aggressive, so I can get through the day and live my life. Perhaps I write poems
because, some part of me knows, that in many ways, I am not really living at all.