the process of being a person in poetry

The urge to view my life as a ball of wasted opportunities is great
but if I managed to get chances once it means I can get them again.
I keep telling myself things like this and wear them as my armour:
I am goddamned adorable, other than all of my bad parts.
I repeat good stuff while I can because it’s hard to not focus on the bad.
So I say I am goddamned adorable, other than all of my bad parts.

I try to make it funny, I try to brag it up, I try to comically exaggerate the stuff:
I’m like the ruins of the Titanic, a handsome wreck worth the effort of going down on.
They’re gonna need Hazmat suits if they wanna remodel this bar because my ass is the bestos.

Okay, okay, the torso not so much,
at this point, I just wanna get in enough shape to look like I was in shape once.
At this point, I’m just gunning for Hadbod. But.
I like wearing my hair long because it says
“it would be stupid to be a creature of violence with this hair. It would totally be a disadvantage on the field of battle.”
Also, it’s handsome as hell. Despite anything else, I’ve got great hair.

I try to wash out the self-loathing and the panic with claims like:
Awesome dudes like me exist but we’re like scratch tickets.
To find a winner, you probably hafta rub off a lot of garbage first.
Look.

My enthusiasm about the good things can be read as self-centeredness but
really, I am just so happy about the good things when they come.
When you are wracked with over-thinking doubt and anxiety bouts,
you don’t necessarily always have the ability to latch onto the good parts.
I’m working on it, I’m working on it,
it’s not so much a science as a practiced art.
So I say I am goddamned adorable, other than all of my bad parts.