Happines Overload: For a high generation
My mom says the Akan word anigyebrusu⊃ to me often. I am sure I have misspelled the word but the literal translation of the word I am thinking of is happiness over the top, or an overabundance of happiness. To put the word in context, my mom says it to me when I speak of wanting to see and experience everything the world has to offer. Having been thinking about that word recently, I have been considering the idea of whether one can ever be too happy, or more accurately, search too desperately or fixate too intensely on the pursuit of happiness.
I have also been thinking about Kid Cudi's interview in Complex Magazine which I read earlier this week. In it, he talks about coping with depression after a bad breakup, quitting his weed habit, getting back to his craft, being present and at peace, among other things. It is possibly one of the better interviews I have read in a while; the interviewer asks really thoughtful questions to which Cudi gives honest, thought provoking responses.
I want to explore the idea of happiness in this piece. More specifically, I want to explore the relationship between our vices, that from which we seek pleasure, sensual pleasure to be exact, and happiness. Here is the thing: I want to push the boundaries in this poem by implicating us all in this idea of fixating too intensely on the pursuit for happiness. And not in a political sense, but in the ways in which everything we do can be interpreted as evading pain (I am going to be bold and try to implicate religion somehow). And Obama snorted cocaine. This is the task. It is an onerous task so I will probably revise the poem several times after I post it. Revisit it often, that is, if you like the idea at least.
Happiness Overload: For a high generation
For us with little tolerance for pain
Because "everything we like is either illegal, immoral, fattening, addictive, expensive or impossible"
Everything is slowing slowly
Everything
Your throat burns a little
It itches so you scratch the front of your neck where the skin feels raw
You can still hear the conversation which hangs in the room
But you can't grasp any of it
Thoughts, like the sour, lingers
Everything is funny
Your reactions are becoming retarded*, your words muddled
The oxymoron of a smooth smolder
Your eyes now clouded are tainted crimson
You are swooning over everything and nothing
All the pain and happiness is coalescing
Time is melting
The five hours spent doing nothing and everything feels heavy
Like when you tried to open your metal lids and it felt like temporary forever
You scratch and burn
Slowing slowly
Welcome to high.
You're 14 when you start
You take some time in the shower to graze the pricks which sprawl on your tender skin
Wiping clean any affirmations of your womanhood
You look like a Lolita now
You're addicted to the prepubescent innocence you lost some time ago
The ecstasy of a manicured purity for the pleasure you arrive to oscillating between bliss and mere damp flesh
You want the wetness between your legs to never dry
To inject life where the priest once fingered you to teach you sin
So where in-between is immorality is where you're happy
You're not here and you're not there
Welcome to high.
Each morning is a grind
The literal crush and pulverizing to your pay
From the mundane to the meaning
Legal tender is the axiom and the affliction
You know that life is a match to your paper
At some point your father too will die on Christmas*
You still can't pay for mere human forgiveness
You have traveled every where but never to your soul
You have sold out every show but no one can afford the ones to your insecurity
So you too know
That we still sleep under the same dark sky
Under a brilliant bright moon
And rain pours on us all
Money is not the only blessing but most blessings come through abundance
So you grind
You're high to the catch
22, you grind
Welcome to high.
During the zombie-like torments of the former, former night,
You felt sharply the enveloping pain from the emptiness of losing someone dear
So you prayed, dear God, dear God, and stayed down, knees bent and eyes shut, and prayed and prayed
Till you felt cloudy, tired, and drowned in belief
That you slept.
The former night, you were fighting demons
The ghosts of your grandmother who chastised you, the aunt who stripped you naked and pounded her frustrations in you till they grazed your flesh
We humans are demons
We sometimes shepherd wandering unclean spirits
So pray without ceasing
Job, your trials compound and the tribulations surmount
This night the battle of Armageddon will be fought in your head, this is depression
So pray till you feel numb
Till you're high of the Savior
He has already paid the price
Your gateway drug is your prayer
Pray till you lie prostrate on the floor and your words run red like the Nile in tongues
Pray, pray, pray
Welcome to high.
Poems for 72 Days, Poem 17
On the italicized
retarded* - I was thinking about my usage of the word and ableism and disability
your father too will die on Christmas* - I was thinking about the death of A$AP Rocky's father this past Christmas but nothing else in the poem or even that stanza is a reference to him or his lifestyle. I would say some of that stanza is in reference to how we perceive rappers. I guess.
I have also been thinking about Kid Cudi's interview in Complex Magazine which I read earlier this week. In it, he talks about coping with depression after a bad breakup, quitting his weed habit, getting back to his craft, being present and at peace, among other things. It is possibly one of the better interviews I have read in a while; the interviewer asks really thoughtful questions to which Cudi gives honest, thought provoking responses.
I want to explore the idea of happiness in this piece. More specifically, I want to explore the relationship between our vices, that from which we seek pleasure, sensual pleasure to be exact, and happiness. Here is the thing: I want to push the boundaries in this poem by implicating us all in this idea of fixating too intensely on the pursuit for happiness. And not in a political sense, but in the ways in which everything we do can be interpreted as evading pain (I am going to be bold and try to implicate religion somehow). And Obama snorted cocaine. This is the task. It is an onerous task so I will probably revise the poem several times after I post it. Revisit it often, that is, if you like the idea at least.
Happiness Overload: For a high generation
For us with little tolerance for pain
Because "everything we like is either illegal, immoral, fattening, addictive, expensive or impossible"
Everything is slowing slowly
Everything
Your throat burns a little
It itches so you scratch the front of your neck where the skin feels raw
You can still hear the conversation which hangs in the room
But you can't grasp any of it
Thoughts, like the sour, lingers
Everything is funny
Your reactions are becoming retarded*, your words muddled
The oxymoron of a smooth smolder
Your eyes now clouded are tainted crimson
You are swooning over everything and nothing
All the pain and happiness is coalescing
Time is melting
The five hours spent doing nothing and everything feels heavy
Like when you tried to open your metal lids and it felt like temporary forever
You scratch and burn
Slowing slowly
Welcome to high.
You're 14 when you start
You take some time in the shower to graze the pricks which sprawl on your tender skin
Wiping clean any affirmations of your womanhood
You look like a Lolita now
You're addicted to the prepubescent innocence you lost some time ago
The ecstasy of a manicured purity for the pleasure you arrive to oscillating between bliss and mere damp flesh
You want the wetness between your legs to never dry
To inject life where the priest once fingered you to teach you sin
So where in-between is immorality is where you're happy
You're not here and you're not there
Welcome to high.
Each morning is a grind
The literal crush and pulverizing to your pay
From the mundane to the meaning
Legal tender is the axiom and the affliction
You know that life is a match to your paper
At some point your father too will die on Christmas*
You still can't pay for mere human forgiveness
You have traveled every where but never to your soul
You have sold out every show but no one can afford the ones to your insecurity
So you too know
That we still sleep under the same dark sky
Under a brilliant bright moon
And rain pours on us all
Money is not the only blessing but most blessings come through abundance
So you grind
You're high to the catch
22, you grind
Welcome to high.
During the zombie-like torments of the former, former night,
You felt sharply the enveloping pain from the emptiness of losing someone dear
So you prayed, dear God, dear God, and stayed down, knees bent and eyes shut, and prayed and prayed
Till you felt cloudy, tired, and drowned in belief
That you slept.
The former night, you were fighting demons
The ghosts of your grandmother who chastised you, the aunt who stripped you naked and pounded her frustrations in you till they grazed your flesh
We humans are demons
We sometimes shepherd wandering unclean spirits
So pray without ceasing
Job, your trials compound and the tribulations surmount
This night the battle of Armageddon will be fought in your head, this is depression
So pray till you feel numb
Till you're high of the Savior
He has already paid the price
Your gateway drug is your prayer
Pray till you lie prostrate on the floor and your words run red like the Nile in tongues
Pray, pray, pray
Welcome to high.
Poems for 72 Days, Poem 17
On the italicized
retarded* - I was thinking about my usage of the word and ableism and disability
your father too will die on Christmas* - I was thinking about the death of A$AP Rocky's father this past Christmas but nothing else in the poem or even that stanza is a reference to him or his lifestyle. I would say some of that stanza is in reference to how we perceive rappers. I guess.
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