Sometimes I get so down, I have to lie
to myself to pick myself up, to spin
the facts from negative to positive.
Say: "I have everything to look forward
to tomorrow. It will be a great day."
A huge fib, I tell myself not to dwell
on the past, full of mistakes and sorrow.
So, again, I must lie, self-deception,
to remember the past as wonderful.
To remember my father as the best,
to think well of my mother and brother,
to find no fault with my island cousin.
This way I can think well of everyone,
the muggers, the rapists, the murderers,
the pedophile priests, and white collar crimes.
I can know that if others break the law,
they are on a different path than myself.
They may be criminals but still people
with family and friends and other loved ones.
Each day I must remember to tell lies
in order to appear optimistic.
If only for my sense of sanity.
To see beyond the horrors of daily
life, to con myself that it is all good.
Everything is for the best, as they say.
The tragedies and comedies entwine
so I no longer know what to laugh at,
or what should provoke me to tears, to cry.
I cry watching movies, television,
listening to music, or while running.
I feel this world never made any sense,
until we started to lie to ourselves,
to spin the facts that things will get better,
or that things could have gone far worse, lucky.
How lucky we are to be alive now,
in this day and age, in this beautiful
world, how wondrous indeed all of nature.
I keep remembering lists of extinct
animals, and rooms of trophy shootings.
I tell myself, this is how they acted
back in the day, but people are better
now, though a few still make mistakes and kill.
I tell myself, money is hard to come
by, they do it for the money, they have
families to feed, and elephants die.
Sometimes I think I lost my conscience long
ago, I am able to see others mistakes
as part of their journey, the weight they bear.
I put my own mistakes in perspective
and context, to decide how I should live,
or how I would act in another time
or place, in another person's shoes, so
to speak, the proverbial switcheroo.
Sometimes this world annoys me like snoring
from the neighbor upstairs, what could be wrong,
could they be sick, or is this just normal?
Sometimes I think normal is a sickness,
that spontaneity is the only
reality, and order is weakness.
Then I remember there are four different
types of people, those that care for others,
those that care for themselves, those who cannot
care for themselves, those who care for no one.
I remember a saying I thought up:
Be glad you are you, and you are not me.
Be glad I am me, and I am not you.
How painful it is to walk in my shoes.
I don't even know how to count blessings,
how to be grateful, or to be thankful.
I sit and ponder the meaning of life,
or whether the whole of life is without
meaning, empty of value, a null set.
Beyond ethics, politics, aesthetics,
all we have to guide us is a logic
without quotidian values, meaning
swept aside with systematic constructs.
To flip a switch is a functional act.
Whether or not the switch turns on the light,
begs the question of the act in itself.
That A is a function of A, not B.
B is the light bulb turning on or off.
Are all our actions to seek a result?
This is why I am not Bertrand Russell.
I am not Ludwig Wittgenstein, either.
I am Rui Carlos da Cunha, no?
The self is vile, our societies vain.
Just for today, I am happy and sane.
Sometimes I wish someone would just shoot me.
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