something is wrong when you’re too tired
to do your favorite thing,
when your best energy is sapped
by people you don’t give a shit about…
attention wasted on fools,
concentration broken by pricks,
and constantly listening to petty complaints
from the ceaseless factory that is humankind —
pummeled by the grind, utterly destroyed,
eviscerated by tedium…
it’s the tragedy of killing 45 minutes on hold
with the fucking cable company
when all you’re trying to do is cancel
your goddamn cable
what kind of insane universe makes it so troublesome
to quit things that don’t matter?
all your juice is given away to things
of little consequence,
stuff that has no meaning, to you, to them, to anyone…
you just wasted good conversation skills
talking about the weather — it’s windy, yeah,
hair looks like shit, yeah, right, yeah, I think tomorrow
it won’t be so windy…yup
it’s easier to nod and smile at the dumbass trying to
make small talk with you than it is to rip them a new one
for wasting more of your already crumbling mind
yes, it is wrong, it’s all wrong!
when you’re too tired to do your favorite thing,
but trust me, it’s not you that’s sick
— it’s something else, something big — some invisible force
that is too powerful and confusing to name, too entangling
to be clearly articulated…
and it makes little difference, really, because you’re too tired
anyway — too brain dead to even try to explain it
because, well, look at you…
you don’t have time to even read, you hardly write, you
don’t exercise at the gym, or socialize…pshhh… you just barely
eked out twenty minutes to masturbate…
ha! favorite thing…what favorite thing?
the back of your eyelids doesn’t count as a favorite thing,
but now that’s all there is
Garbage Notes:
Damn, where do I even start with this one? It’s easy to get pummeled by the world, by society, by people. It’s so easy to become a people pleaser and lose the ability to say no. So much of ourselves gets taken from us, burnt as a sacrifice on the altar of productivity.
I wrote this piece at a time when I was likely struggling to do everything—struggling to work, to make money, to maintain relationships, to maintain my health, you name it. And all of it was getting in the way of my favorite thing: writing. In a world where your favorite thing gets inevitably relegated to the back burner of every damn conversation, what hope is there?
There’s outrage in this poem—it’s an outcry against the absurdities of life, against the expectations of being a well-rounded person, maintaining the facade of being happy and well-adjusted. And, of course, how tiring all of that is.
If the thing you do—the thing you want to put above all things, isn’t always seen as valued or respected in society, then it’s inevitably going to be the thing you do in secret. It will be the thing you do when no one else is looking, the thing you spend your final waking hours on, the thing you do in the dark, the thing you do when there’s no time to do anything else.
Sure, life will make it so that you’re always too tired to do your favorite thing. But life can’t take that thing away from you. In the end, it’s still yours, and you’ll wait for your window. You’ll breathe it in like the air.
Franco Amati 2023
To say you are singing my song Would be an epic understatement. Excellent work!.
"With what I enjoy most contented least.
Desiring this man's art
Or that man's scope."