bored at work,
and writing poems on a loose piece of legal paper
while listening to dinosaur jr.
and wondering if they’d ever let me join their band,
or maybe i’m too young,
have too short of hair,
and too little talent,
all of which might be true,
but it still hurts to hear
i’ve been destroyed by a paralysis of thought
that has left me staring at a blank screen,
a blank sheet,
a blankness deep within,
while performing basic arithmetic because despite
saying i would never need math in the real world
when i was a kid,
i do occasionally use math to,
you know,
help me out of catatonia, even when it doesn’t work all too well
i don’t think it’s creepy that i sometimes
look out the blinds to see what my neighbors are up to,
but then again, i’m biased,
i would think,
but it’s not like i’m trying to catch my neighbors doing something bad,
but rather it’s because i have crippling anxiety and can hardly go outside,
much less think about going outside,
and sometimes i get this idea in my head,
this silly little idea,
that i want to be social,
you know,
with people within my general proximity,
but lawd, gawd, sward, no, no, no,
i could never,
i would never,
actually go outside and introduce myself
Fred Aiken Writing 