it’s always the real things
that get in the way
the real jobs
and the real people,
the real problems,
yeah, real simple…
but is it me?
or has the real world
gotten real trivial?
I can’t even find
a quiet place to sit and
be still…
now, I can’t even recall
the last time I’ve had
a deep conversation…
it’s always that these people
wanna discuss those people
and nothing ever works
for most people—
and those people can’t stand
these other people…
and don’t even get me started
on what’s wrong with this guy
or why we chose that guy
aaahhhhh — it’s all an endless cycle
of where the hell is this going!?
it’s so mind-numbing and lonely…
no one can sleep
and no one can cope
and mornings, they hurt
and there’s never enough hope
…no…
there’s never any hope
of someday… maybe one day…
yeah, maybe (in your heyday)
oh, please, tell me, baby
when were you going to save me?
just come on now and show me (I know
that you know that you know me…)
how am I ever supposed to break out
of it?
break out…of the shit…
break through?
ohhhh, through…
what is true? (I’ll hold on to you)
— where’s the freedom?
— where’s the salvation…
in real things?
Garbage Notes:
I find myself returning to this theme in my writing—this notion that the things we call ‘real’ in our everyday lives often feel so superficial, trivial, and full of shit.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but it always feels like these ‘real’ things—the people, the jobs, the obligations, the basic problems of existence—these things that are supposed to constitute reality for human beings, instead feel more like hinderances than anything else. Hinderances to reaching our full potential, to finding some kind of meaning, to discovering what actually makes us happy.
I think these ‘real’ things that we speak of are all pre-packaged into the expectations of what we’re supposed to do with our lives. And this is handed down to us at birth as part of a set of parameters to live by. These are the things we ought to do. These are the milestones you’re supposed to reach. But ultimately it’s more stifling than anything.
I don’t know, I just have a real hard time, man, trying to figure out how to live when the things I really want to do don’t seem attainable at all, and the things I’m supposed to do seem, like, utterly unbearable. As the line says, it really does feel like “an endless cycle of where the hell is this going?”
So what do we do? We seek salvation in something… we look for other people to save us. We search for love. We look to religion to save us. We dedicate our lives to the unreal. To the fictions. To stories. To legacies. We have to tell ourselves it’s all for something, right?
But how real is the real when all that we have left at the end of the day are intangible things—fears, failures, regrets, ideas, hopes, dreams? All prayers for a future that seems no more real than the days that have flown right past us.
Franco Amati 2023
Having just returned from doing a bunch of "real" things this morning, I'm really looking forward to sitting down with my fiction...
I like how you added 'fucking' to the line about mornings in the narration—gives it the right amount of stank to that feeling of drudgery. Well read. Your poems really snap to life in conversational form.