Posts by Jonathan Gonzalez
Death Over Life
Like a faucet
the thoughts,
they pour out
like the water
that drips
from my eyes,
heavy from the day,
I am tired of this way,
this path we’ve chosen,
death over life.
Ungratefully Grateful
I don’t want to live more gratefully.
I want the luxury to take my life for granted.
I don’t want to be reminded of our fragility.
I want the chance of pain to disappear.
We deserve to exist on our own terms.
Two rights make a wrong
when your right
suppresses mine.
We’ll Fall
Can we rewrite in real time
the rules of this arrangement,
the way that we engage with
all the people we call strangers?
Perhaps we’ve more in common
then we’re often told to believe.
Perhaps we’d figure that out
if we’d stop judging and just speak.
But oh, we only listen
to find space to interject
instead of just listening
to provide space to understand.
To understand all the things
we don’t understand at all.
We must choose to comprehend
or comprehend we’ll fall.
Toxicity
If we do not heal our wounds
we will bleed onto those who did not hurt us.
This saying affects me in ways I did not expect.
The expectation is the hardest part.
What it means to be a man.
Teach me, again, what it means to be a man?
Who taught you? And who taught them?
Each meaningless milestone
is wrought with our creation
worthless expectations that are unrealistic.
It’s almost sadistic how we push them onto others
and ourselves.
A toughness that evolves
only based on fear.
We wouldn’t need toughness
if there was no fear.
Why can’t we create
a kindness that permeates
and settles even the saddest souls?
And why do we call them wounds
when it’s more like a cancer?
Infecting generations
one after another.
We are not born equipped
to fend off these attacks.
But we cannot carry on
these sins of the past.
We owe it to ourselves
to sow and mend ourselves back together.
Because if we do not heal our wounds,
we will bleed onto those
who did not hurt us,
forever.
What if?
What if the pursuit of peace
isn’t a chase at all?
What if peace already lives
within our self-contained existence,
cloaked in its insistence
it never be found?
And as it hides we move our eyes
to look anywhere but here.
But here peace thrives
in the minutiae of life’s few stops,
in the breaths between our thoughts.
Peace is not some promise
or a prize to be won.
It’s not a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Instead, you’ll find peace in the moments you stop moving.
Only when you end the chase
may peace reveal its place.
Asymmetry
In a world imperfect,
we cannot expect symmetry.
For the curved roads and uneven hills
remind us of unpredictability.
The ability of the ground to shake
or the boulders to tumble.
Our lives are often guided
by how we clear blocked paths.
We’re defined by how we traverse without maps,
how we dance without song,
by how we carry on.
It is anything, but easy or simple.
But we cannot always draw
within these lines we create.
We must find comfort in the inevitability
the lines will break.
Read Me
In reverse
we go.
Unless you know some other way.
It’s how I’ve lived my life.
Mired in my mistakes.
It must be painful to watch.
I was merely born like this.
I’m apt to take the long way around
even when the path at my feet is the shortest.