Thursday

I Know I Know Already


No one has ever liked me – just liked me
like you sometimes just instinctively like a person

Needed things from me, curious of me,
foolish enough to compete with me? Sure

If I am being honest with myself and the world
I have to admit that no one has ever liked me

Wanted me, needed me, genuinely loved me,
sympathized with my situation? Sure

But no one has ever liked me just to like me
for reasons unrelated to investment returns

Appreciated something I could do,
envied some natured or nurtured aspect of my being? Sure

But liked?
Not likely.

I’ve always known all of this and there has
never been a moment I did not know all of this

Perhaps I make it way too difficult on purpose –
a buy-in way too high for a pay-out far too low

Weird and different and quirky and obstinate –
arrogant and flippant and unwilling to assimilate

I’ve heard it all all the time time after time
since the beginning of my existence here in existence

Truths reveal narratives unbelievably complicated
and sometimes embarrassingly messy

But maybe these are all of the truths
I have spent so much time and energy cultivating

Yet liked?
Not quite.

I can be as lovely a friend as I can be
a pretentious fool – I know I know already

Sometimes I find absolute avoidance to be an
acceptable manner of dealing with situations

I am a snob, an elitist, and always self-correct and
so much better and superior to the majority

Yet I am absolutely nothing in the scope of everything –
just one speck of dust afloat in all of matter

My only hope is to be as honest to and with myself as I
inexplicably expect you to be with you and yours

Or maybe this is all just another table read for
a character in desperate search of an amusing role

Untitled (Slats)


Billy Gladstone