focus in poetry

if you focus on the bad parts of your past
if you hang onto your resentments jealously
you’re going to end up hating everything
your entire life
even the good parts
maybe especially the good parts
if you focus on the failures and fuck-ups
the lost opportunities where you were a coward
the near-misses where you were simply stupid
the best parts of your life will start to taste
like teases
like mocking glimpses just to whet your tongue
then cruelly ripped away
if you focus on the worst
even the best becomes bitter
the baby is the bathwater
without the water
the baby shrivels and dies
the struggle is context
scientists say we’re mostly water
we are the bathwater
you can’t have one without the other
without drying up

joy is additive
joy combines
sadness and rage and fear
these things are multiplicative
pain compounds
it goes exponential
pain is a deep dark hole
that is more than the sum of its parts
but to an extent you can choose
this isn’t magical thinking
this isn’t mystical hibbity-jibbity
you can’t will the universe
into not being occasionally cruel
you can’t mind-whammy people
into not being quite often cruel
you often can’t stop bad things
from happening
this life can be needless vicious to you
and you can’t wish the horrors away
but you can at least not reinforce it
you can take away its power to multiply
by not focusing on it
then it can hurt you once
it can’t multiply against itself
that’s maybe the only choice we get
but we do get that one
we’re given that out
we have to take it

so take that pain
stop hoarding it in your attic
stop shoving it under the couch
pull it out and rip it up
shred it and make a bed to sleep in like a rat
wake up the next morning and torch it
warm yourself at daybreak
with the flames of your past
then look up at the sun

God, that sun’s beautiful
it’s up there somewhere
ten million atomic bombs a second
going on for goddamned ever
it’ll keep you warm a lot longer
than any campfire of regret ever could
and it’s going to come up again
and again and again and again
focus on that
you get a choice
life can hurt you
people can hurt you bad
but you get to choose
how many times

and if you only let it hurt you once
if you can wake up the next day
and remember that goddamned sun
and the joys you’ve had
despite the pain
the joys will add atop each other
and the pain can’t fuck like rabbits
the pain will slowly fade

that’s the choice we get
shit luck and assholes
can grind us into paste
the muses and the odds
can lift us to the stars
but we can choose
where to focus
and what to reinforce
linger on the good parts
and move on