(aka sticking to your routines is all well and fine, but it has to be in preparation for something… else, something… BIG aka what are we fighting for if there’s nothing on the other side; there must be something worthwhile ahead to give us hope (even if not, at least lie to me and say there is) aka what in the world are we working toward if not a better tomorrow?)

I heard it from a friend once
(a friend who was my employer at the time,
but a friend first, though an employer
previously, chronologically)
[fake it ’til you make it fake it ’til you make it]
over post-midnight chicken wings
we cooked in his commercial kitchen
after a few puffs of pot
(something I’d long given up at that point—
and BLAH, pot; ain’t it obvious
I am old? and therefore I was
very high as well?)
after working sunup to sundown
at his pub by night/diner by day for days
and nights on end, crashing at his
apartment in the building above,
doing it all over and over again
[rinse wash repeat rinse wash repeat]
when the realization hit my stoned brain,
and the words hit my saucy lips:

“Hey, man—what the fuck
are we actually doing here?”
and he shook his head—
barefoot, sitting cross-legged
on the floor at his coffee table,
television a radiant glow in the background,
the mist of Niagara Falls visible through
his 5^th floor living room window—
bit into a wing, and replied,
“We’re working today
for a better tomorrow.”

I didn’t understand it then,
because I wasn’t working for shit but survival;
I was running in circles
[fake it ’til you make it fake it ’til you make it]
chasing my tail, spinning the cosmic
hamster wheel in place,
in the wrong direction

it was not until years later,
years of making the same mistakes
[one step forward four steps back]
doing the same things over and over again
expecting different results
[the true definition of insanity;
rinse wash repeat rinse wash repeat]
when hindsight revealed
that I had so much to hash out,
to unknot, to work through—
and the cure is cruel;
the more you want it,
the more it eludes you,
and only if you drop-in
drop-off drop-out can it come,
taking its merry old time,
dragging its dirty heels
all the lowly way…

I don’t know much—in fact,
I know next to nothing—but now
I know what he meant:

I have not yet “made it,”
but maybe I have?
maybe this is it?
and even if not
I’m working toward it,
and if nothing else:

I sure ain’t fakin it no more.

[fuck, man—I never was]