self-awareness in poetry

many people try to erase
the bad things in their lives
by never mentioning them at all
by pretending they do not exist
myself I try to talk about my troubles
so much it exhausts their terrible power
wears them out and make them go away
of course as they’re both sides
of the same magical thinking coin
both approaches fail miserably
it might be best to try and find
a path between the two instead

some of us go through our lives
stating the obvious
some of us go through the world
stating the spontaneous
others of us state the obfuscation
hoping it passes for the other two
it turns out that gibberish
gets the job done as well as anything
anyway it’s something to do

when you make yourself unhappy
for the sake of someone else
consider how many others in your life
it will make terribly unhappy down the road
there is a subtle calculus in this for us
there is math to do
for me and for you