Poem – Julian Wise

A poem on discomfort.

I feel unsettled.

Much of me feels unsettled.

I feel unsettlement in my chest.

What is unsettlement but worry + desire?

But the fear that the thing I want may not occur?

But feeling uncomfortable until the uncomfortable becomes

normal, where it’s not even resolved but the sensation has just lived

there for so long that you get used to it and accept it and forget it exists and

maybe if you had done something a while back to remove it you’d feel okay now but

but

you didn’t.

And you don’t.

So you.

Here.

Pushing forward.

Taking melatonin to help sleep.

Hoping tomorrow you’ll awake without

the pain your chest

and worrying that if you don’t

you’ll be too chicken then

as you were now

to fix it.

John Prine died today. He was my first concert. He wrote every song I love that I don’t remember who wrote. He wrote this poem, too, but he wrote it through me. I’ll miss him. One day I’d like to see him again.

I had a feeling I could be someone.

You’ll only feel by listening

to the same song,

fifty versions,

but none better than the downtown boy

with hair like Dylan

accepted to Yale when I was

but dropped out

and now plays to a Farmers’ market audience–

an empty picnic blanket and me.

At 24 years old,

he looks more like twelve

and sings folk like a wizened bluesman.

Will he go anywhere

or stay in Fairfax forever,

wearing the same uncool shoes

as the classmate I bullied in 4th grade.

If America’s misfits come to San Francisco

and SF’s go to Oakland,

where do Oakland’s go?

We’re only fifteen miles north of The City,

but you can believe in the stars having a plan for you

and we’ll still believe in you.

If you move too quick,

you hit the speed of loneliness

like a too-fast car,

breaking the sound barrier,

collapsing into yourself,

emptying out.

We all feel that way.

Some of us become.

We all pass away.

Tag: Poem

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