We are the frequently underestimated, untimely, inadequate... rattled by rhetoric, not unwavering, but perhaps too confident to truly stand on our own. Still, we’re blamed. Impatiently blindsided, sidewinding through roads that bob through hills. Faltering to a fault, proofing to prove—invalidated. Hobgoblins, the lot of us, wandering lost and wicked.
They wanted free-thinkers; think outside-the-box. Perhaps they didn’t realize how far we’d flutter, fluster. Fly high, they encouraged. Stand up for what you believe in, and believe you can soar. Shoot for the stars and you’ll land in the clouds. But maybe the cannon blew up in someone’s faces. Maybe we never truly believed.
Stuck somewhere between brevity and flourishment of constant thought... Things used to be different. Things aren’t the same. Do we even stop to think, “it shouldn’t be this way?” Maybe that it shouldn’t have ever even gotten this way? (Though we don’t mean half the shit we think, we’re just trying to figure out how we feel, if we believe.) Yet, still maybe the fuse hasn’t fizzled yet. Maybe nothing’s ever changed at all, not one bit.
I’m not looking for anyone to light a match; it just seems like my Zippo's been run through the washer, maybe dropped in the pool. More likely I’m out of butane, so I wait, a human cannonball, surrounded by the thick, cold steel of it all, perplexed as to how to escape and forget the shot altogether, “fuck searching for fuel,” all the while knowing I’d rather stay landlocked, afraid to lose touch, or come crashing down, doubting my artillery’s angle. But us hobgoblins are already locked and loaded, and some things can’t be undone. Truly (madly, deeply), how have we let it get this way?
Some things we keep just for ourselves. I envy the star and cloud people, yet I’m attached to those wandering around the earth with little aspiration of ever even reaching. Those fairies fly untethered, unconsumed by lore of clouds and stars, creating their own stratosphere and mesosphere. Such bliss in ignorance as to what they’re (we’re?) missing, or perhaps apathy, resulting from some secret we’d missed amongst rows of chairs, facing framed black squares mounted to walls, scribbled with white characters. Real good at skirting around real issues—I just don’t think it’s always appropriate. I just don’t think we should. Skirt, that is. We’re all the same, we just think different, outside-the-box, just like they’d asked (even though they asked us all to aim higher and higher, until)? Inundated with “supposed tos” and “how tos” and “want tos...” And as with each unique perspective presented to an inside-the-box thinker, we’re rejected, for what they’d begged us to become.
We weren’t of the "lucky enough" to be born there, the stars or clouds or whatever. They know, and they’re sorry, or not, but they want us to get there (or not), us hobgoblins, the lot of us, riddled with anxiety, for the ground isn’t good enough, and the stars are, well, far off.
“The clouds would be nice but DON’T you SETTLE, you’re too smart for that, you’ll go far.” And well, the clouds aren’t quite as close to the stars as they once seemed, and they seem farther off from us down-here-people, too.
Confuddled in cannons, all angled the “right way,” all facing different directions that could allow us to collide, some implode. Some shoot so low they barely make it off the ground; and some wait, because they’re afraid to aim for something unachievable. Why don’t we get out and wander amongst other spirits of the hearth, the imps and fairies? There may be a better moment to catch wind. We wait. Patiently, unwaveringly, until we get out, or explode, or rot and just keep it to ourselves. Aiming is all good-and-well for a while, but taking off? Things were different, things will never be the same. If we could only just figure out how we feel. If only that never mattered to begin with.