egg on your face in poetry

feeling bad doesn’t help anything move forward
feeling bad doesn’t accomplish anything
feeling bad spends more energy than trying again would
it’s like that old myth about eating hard-boiled eggs
that you burn more calories digesting hard-boiled eggs
than you ultimately gain back in eggy calories
so if you just ate hard-boiled eggs forever
you’d just waste away to nothing
the eggs would put you at a deficit
until you ceased to be

haven’t a clue if that’s true
it probably isn’t
it sounds horrendeously counter-intuitive
but so is the idea that feeling bad
could ever move us forward
whatever we think we’re getting out of feeling bad
it’s less than we put in
even when we think we’re getting something out of feeling bad
even when feeling bad feels like a grand catharsis?
even when feeling bad feels like a punishment we’re due?
even when feeling bad is like
a great weight off our shoulders!
and the very planet beneath us has moved!
when you look at the balance later
you’ll find you put even more than all that into it
over time

because feeling bad builds up slow
feeling bad grows
and grows and grows!
and even if it feels like a rushing river when the dam blows
if you think about it
if you scroll your mind back over time
leading up to it you cried
a dry ocean bed up back full
to get that paltry river’s burst
to go

feeling bad is like starving yourself
by eating a million hard-boiled eggs
making yourself feel full
while you’re hollowed out inside
and I am DONE!
I am done with that kind of dying!
I am done with that kind of dying

I mean
I’m trying
I mean I’m trying