Creativity in its weakest form
Is patience lost and pages torn
Ink spills over like a storm
Whether weather’s fair
 
In sitting poses frozen still
Hand is poised with quivering quill
Staring out the windowsill
Not knowing where to stare
 
Fingers twitch and replay movement
Wondering where all the time went
Pondering on how it was spent
Unmoved from this chair
 
Who’s to know it won’t return
Thoughts that I still can’t discern
Not fuel enough left to burn
And not enough to care
 
Nothing left but air
And that’s not enough to share

What good is a life that doesn’t keep learning
Or doesn’t find chances to take
What good a heartbeat that never quickens
Or gives itself the chance to break

What you don’t seek, you’ll never find
What you don’t ask, you’ll never know
Where you don’t look, you’ll blunder blind
Where you don’t push, you’ll never grow

Why take the risk of risking nothing
You can still lose what you never had
Why play the dangerous game of careful
Even standing still can drive you mad

This time I’m going to take my chances
Keep my head up, aim for the skies
I’ve lived too long afraid of falling
But that’s when we find greatest rise

I’d like to tell you, if you’ll permit me,
Something that sounds perhaps a little crazy

You see, sometimes
When I’ve been really happy
When I’ve been lucky
When all has been good
And for a while the sun has shined
On my little corner of the world

I start to feel this monster rise up inside of me
Triggered by the sunshine and rays of happy

And it threatens me with rain whenever sun abounds
It threatens me with cold whenever warmth surrounds
It comes out to warn me, to tell me what is wrong
What I’m missing, what I don’t see, what’s been gone for too long

And then I do see it as soon as it speaks
I see and I know it instantly
I know that such sunshine cannot always be
That this many happy things were not meant for me

I come to my senses and it hurts while it heals
Because I’d forgotten for too long how awareness feels
How the rain and the cold can comfort and hold
How the tears can set free all those feelings untold

Because the monster, you see, is just a voice inside me
It’s nothing more than a part of my own psyche
That needs the darkness to balance the light
And highlights the wrong to level the right
Because my spirit needs something to fight
To challenge and steady all of its might

And we, my monster and me
Are two of a kind, a kind of package deal
You can’t only have one and have that be real
It would only ever be temporary
Until the good has gone on too excessively

And then the monster comes calling again
Reminding me what I left in my other jeans
Put through the washing, folded and forgotten
Till I wear out and tear out these splitting seams

Then stripped bare again, I remember what it means
That it’s not a full life if I’ve been living only dreams
Sometimes you have to wake up and see everything
The good and the bad and everything in between

Nothing is sacred or always sunshine
No life is ever good all of the time
And a life of pure happy could never be mine
Because my monster needs that decline to unwind
And I’ll forever have such depths in my mind

I need to remember if I ever again find
A life full of that happy bright dumb luck sun
One can only assume is a fluke in someone’s trust fund
That I sure don’t deserve, though I’ve worked for the won
And still feel full fixed by tasers set to stun

Remember in that moment the long forgotten one
My monster within me who comes to steady me some
And without which I’d come completely undone

Now if you here this and think me disturbed
I’m surely no more crazy than others you’ve heard
And I’d wager a gambling there’s more in this gathering
Who feel such a monster inside of them too
Well, how about it, do you?

What would we do if we never felt anything but alone
I’ve looked out over lands with many eyes
and with many leagues under the sea
and I still can’t find the answer
to whether we are alone
or whether I want to be

It’s a curious thing, human nature
the wanting to have and feeling like we don’t
the never knowing if we’d had too much
or if it will ever be enough
having it all and being without
or having nothing but your touch

I can’t say if I know for certain
I could guess and I could be wrong
but at least I’ll know I tried my best
to be all that was wanted for
all that my desire saw
and all that my heart could store

and let go of the rest