If I Had Nothing To Say

If I had nothing to say

I have said it all already

If I was born to be a nobody

I succeeded right from the start

If I was fated to do nothing

I have finished that already

If I was to be a loser

I was the first to come in last

If I was always a fool

I don't have to try anymore

If I went to hell as they bade me

I must certainly know the way

If I was simply worthless

I always understood my intrinsic value

If I had nowhere to go

I am already there

If I never had someone to meet

I have already met them

If I never had a thing to offer

I had already given it all up

If I never had a future

I have lived it all already

If I never had a chance

I need not fear any risk

If I have nothing left to show for

I am completely invisible at this time

If I knew not where I was going

I have not the slightest idea where I am

If I am one in a million

I know there must be uncountable millions

If I had no direction

All ways must be the same

If I was a quitter

I quit before I even started

If I had no potential

I have still done my very best

If I lost my way

it never slowed me down

If I always lived in the past

it is all over now

If I swallowed all my pride

that was not what made me fat
If I would not try hard enough

It was not all that easy

If I did not listen

I have heard it all in any case

If I had no guidance

I could not stray from the path

If I knew it all

it has left but little behind

If I wasted my best years

at least I don't remember

If I remained quite ignorant

I knew it all along

If I lacked a spine

It did not hurt to be stepped upon

If I was filled with self-contempt

how could my life be so very empty?

If I had lost my marbles

it was without a point of reference

If I were woeful and insecure

I was too afraid to say it

If my dreams were all in technicolor

I never knew black from white in reality

If I could not plan ahead

any and all actions were the same

If I lost my head

I found it filled with regrets

If I always heard only never

I easily escaped all futures

If I had been an angry young man

I morphed into a bitter old fool

If I had no sense at all

the world made perfect sense to me

If I did not use my head

I did not have to think about it

If I was not worth a damn

I really could not help them, anyway

My Life Of Whispers

Stored up a poisonous rage and acidic resentment deep inside myself over external injustices

Bristled as the less timid squeaked out their shortsighted, greedy and furtive leadership deception

Lay in bed late at night and remade the world, got up tired and went tamely off again to my dull job

Grew hoarse deep inside from shouting out the truth, without even raising the slightest whisper

Too timid to open my mouth when it counted, too afraid to really stand up for anything at all

Too insecure to be a leader, too little self-confidence to try for even the second-best schools

Unable to push my way under the lights, wrapped up too tightly in my own silly phobias

Too often called a nothing when I was quite young, drilled on my inabilities, time and again

Too long alone with self-ingrained reproaches, mine was a life of whispers, no one else should hear

Too much time wasted on a foolish depression, overly attentive to meaningless internalities

Afraid to speak out thinking I might sound as stupid as them, yet poisoned by my own angry silence

Peeping shrill protests, but only to myself, shamed into empty muteness by my screaming insecurity

Too willing to just let them rape and waste, con and steal, defile and then righteously pontificate

Cowed into an uneasy and guilty silence by the deeply ground-in knowledge that they are my betters

Unable to be driven by greed and insecurity to back-bite, face-step and ass-kiss my way to the top

Railing only to myself in the empty solitude of long nights, but without releasing the smallest sound

Responding to atrocities, extinctions and propaganda with the merest shake of my head

Harboring secret plans to someday stand up for what I never actually stated out loud I believed in

Too happily turning over mind and senses to endless channel flipping and video games

Abbreviating my thought into chopped soundbite nonsense, constantly tweeting and texting

Never dared organize, distill and commit my complaints publicly for fear of a just ridicule

Jealously would not support others who spoke out, but kept my own words jumbled up inside

Too crippled by internal contradictions to ever get to my feet on my own and speak out at all

Too deeply mired in self-loathing to get beyond a mute mediocrity they treated as tacit acceptance

Lecturing, tutoring and even preaching, but only ever to myself, and just when I was alone

Able to see my own internal contradictions well enough to keep them balled up inside

A life of impotent whispering in dark halls that was never really meant for other’s ears at all

Forced to think in shouts over the idiot noise that gradually drove me deaf, even on the inside

A Slightly Above Average Man

Slightly above average, that man, a merest notch more than ordinary

Just smart enough to see how boring and useless was the nature of his life

Mired deeply in common torture with his mouth barely clearing the muck of mediocrity

Sentenced to be able to fully grasp the futility of his present,

Seeing the waste that is his past and predicting the folly in his future

Yes, able to see and understand, but no, not able to control or to alter

Consciousness of this simple absolute truth brings on a muted disappointment

Yet another former would-be, still not quite sure what, might-have-been

Above average but also not possessed of that great drive to riches or to power

A man above the average, but not nearly enough, and that he knows for sure

Not head and shoulders above the crowd but, frustratingly, almost above eye level

A notch above the masses, but so far below those he must always look up to

just a ittle more than average, man, just enough to really know his place

Just enough for sad regrets, just enough to be able to see his shortcomings

Just barely above enough to catch a glimmer of what his betters contest