Intimate Conversation

 Thoughts like ping pong balls
In a lottery cage today...
Whirling...
Spinning...
Too chaotic to be a dance...
Highs and lows
Changing from moment
To moment...
Jumping...
Bouncing...
Careening 
Almost
Out of control...
Adjusting the contrast,
Intensity and hue...
Trying to pick up
A signal...
Maybe I'm just 
Overstimulated...
Had great conversation
With an old friend...
Had great conversation
With a new friend...
Real communication...
I don't allow that
Often enough...
I tend to think,
Emotionally and psychologically,
That I can do it alone...
But that's me
Starving myself...
Lone soldier mentality...
But I can't do it alone...
None of us can...
Therapy alone
Won't do...
Psyche meds alone
Won't do...
We're all intensely aware,
Now more than ever,
Of the importance
Of contact...
We settle for touching
Each other's minds
Via social media
And cell towers...
It's saving some of us
From darker 
Psychological outcomes...
Reaching out
Over the distance
While in the comfort
Of our own homes...
Still having some freedom
Even while confined...
Being able to express emotions,
Both privately
And publicly,
On the Internet...
It's a place
Where I can bare my soul
With what some believe 
Are poetic words...
It's not quite as adrenalizing 
As jumping around
On a coffee house stage
Reading poetry 
Out of well worn journals, 
But it is a kind of freedom...
A place where
I don't have to feel
Ashamed or afraid
To emote...
I don't care or mind
Who's watching...
It is for me...
It is for my friends...
It's entertainment...
Performative art...
And it's therapy
With positive feedback...
Plotting...
Planning
How to get back
To myself...
That me that existed
"Before the world
Got its hands on me..."
The me that existed
Before I existed...
Pure like conception
In thought...
That moment
When the genetic material
That made me
First came together...
I don't believe
It was a blank slate,
And that was me...
The first exposure to the world
Was nourishment and hormones...
Then birth,
Always traumatic,
That first breath
After dreaming for nine months...
Things only compound
From there...
We are carried
Lightyears away
From where we began...
It's a round trip ticket...
It can be...
If I only knew then
What I know now...
If I only knew now,
What I knew then...