Typewriter Series #419 by Tyler Knott Gregson
Text for Tired Eyes:
At this exact instant on this exact planet
there are more people than you, or I, or anyone else
would ever care to admit, that are buried beneath
the weight of wasted time.
The shoulds and supposed tos and becauses and jobs
and money and requirements and responsibilities
add up and pile up and entomb us.
How many miles separate how many people
from the lives they should be leading,
the people they should be loving and the moments
they will never get back?
The justification of this frustration
paints a glossy veneer of happiness over the rust
of the truth hiding below it.
It’s the realization of our encapsulation
that cracks the paint and lets the color fade.
When do we forget the value of what we hold
and when do we forget to care about the burying
we submit ourselves to?
Somewhere a much younger version of ourselves is staring into the future
raising tiny fists, clenched into the air
and screaming a wordless warning that falls on
deaf ears that age has stolen sound from.
We see ourselves and we see the meaning we’ve assigned
to meaningless things;
we see the imagination running off the pages we painted,
watercolors evaporating and leaving behind only blank
canvas, only dry brushes.
Hasn’t the time come to stop this, to put water
to the burning of our futures by the flames of our
past restrictions? Has not the time arrived to
mix the color in the water and dip the brush,
dried an atrophied and lonely from the waiting it too
has endured?
Live life like you love to live and make that life
the one you’ve been waiting for.
At this exact instant you and only you
can rise from the layers of wasted time,
drive your hand through the sediment and
feel the sunlight on your fingers.
