On Mediocrity

Essay 57

At the bottom of it there are the things you can’t do. You sit with them like toys you wound up but that won’t start. I disappoint myself a bit every day. I give up things for other things ‘til none works. I see the people who seem to have figured it out. I see the people clamped into some compromise, the pressed down limbs held tight against the bodies, I open the door to show them there’s an outside, I invite them to places that I don’t go. We lie so we don’t have to hate each other, the borrowed voices purring into a drone, I hold the centre so I don’t have to compare, it’s no use saying all this wasn’t my fault. The half-talent licks up to ambition its half-meant promise that it will give it a try. The sun is setting over a city that’s no home. I fumble for the light switch in a house that’s not mine. At night we travel back to places where all this seemed fine.