Routines (English Carnival UM)

I performed both my live poems, Routines and Untitled 2, again at UM on June 10th, 2023. During the last academic semester of my degree.

I updated the poem from my last performance. Here are the words now:

You are sat on one of the park swings, watching the sun set

A man walking his dog circles the playground for the third time

You count, because you like counting

It looks like it’s a routine

One that he has cradled and sheltered within the snug sanity of his existence

He’s so familiar with it, the way that you can tell which footsteps in your house are your mom’s and which are your sister’s

And you are jealous

The Frank Ocean song you’ve had on repeat is on repeat because

Only in that rhythm do you find ease (routine number 1)

You wonder how you can envy the sky for looking more alive than you

For expressing emotion as vibrantly as you last did in the sixth grade

You feel humiliated, like it’s watching who you’ve become now

Someone who constantly seeks to be alone with their thoughts and then gets distracted...by being alone with their thoughts (routine number 2)

Every action you do feels like you’re cramming for a test over and over, memorizing just to memorize, forgetting when it’s done

You move around just to move

For God’s sake you’re watching a beautiful sun set

But you know when you get home you’ll feel like you’ve just watched it rise from the west (routine number 3)

Someone who makes your heart nearly fly walks by

You dig the heels of your shoes into the ground and abruptly start drawing circles into the dirt

You wonder whether they saw you and what they thought (routine number 4)

You think to yourself.

The spark in your chest, the turning of your stomach

Does it come when you want

Does it stay as long as you allow

Does it go when you tell it to

Does it hang its head when you scold it

Dear You.

It’s not a pet but a feeling

Like a pet you think it can be taught

Because there has to be a how-to on training your mind

Because the last time you hiccuped it wasn’t the laughing kind

You want to be part of that world

But ‘that’ is more like ‘those’ and ‘world’ is more like ‘worlds’ and you can’t absorb the 300 different traits you wish to embody in 2 seconds and you can’t take care of 300 pets

The glass slipper of your soul leaving you incomplete in the middle of the night

Fragments of your imagination making you yourself feel like a fragment

You stay up and wonder who will search the whole town and return the shard of your chest back to you (routine number 5)

If anyone will

You travel through the woods in search of someone

Unlike Hansel and Gretel, you don’t want to find your way back home

You yearn for a miracle to happen like miracles do

There’s no genie here though, just God and you’re afraid He, They, She, doesn’t like you (routine number 6)

Your story is not as colorful as you wish it were

I mean, maybe the evening sky is too big a competitor

If there’s a plot twist it’s called sadness

If there are knot twists it’s called anxious

Rapunzel’s hair can’t come up short—

Unless it’s Flynn Rider who cuts it

Fairytales aren’t real

And you’re trying to find contentment in what’s not real (routine number 7)

And you don’t know if that’s good or bad

And you can’t even rhyme for more than a couple lines at a time

And maybe there’s more complexity to life than good guy bad guy

And maybe your demons are not always bad as your angels are not always good

And—

A man walking his dog circles the playground for the third time

You count, because you like counting

It looks like it’s a routine

And you are jealous

Like you don’t have one.