Bother Me Tomorrow - InkSpot.Com

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Bother Me Tomorrow

What choices am I making
Every moment of my life?
What paths am I taking
Directing me to strife?

How do I know what I'm doing is good?
What's good for me
Might not be good for you.
Is good only what I like?
Is it only what is right?
Is good the beautiful and the true?
A million questions dog my every move—
I overthink, underperform
Afraid to be mistaken, outside of the norm.

So I give up on pursuit of serious goals
Burying myself in frivolous daily flow.
Terrified of commitments taking tolls,
Of getting into what I do not know.
Painful experience has only taught me
To avoid trouble by doing nothing risky.

Run, hide, disappear:
Invisible is safe.
Barbed wire of fear
Keeps me alone in my dreams.

Kicking cans
Down eternal roads
Skipping stones
Across rivers of dreams

What choices am I making
Every moment of my life?
What paths am I taking
Directing me to strife?

I no longer care enough to answer
I seek escape at all costs.
Bother me tomorrow
Today I'll buy no sorrows.
But my purchases are lost—
Fleeting like a dying phone battery
Losing myself in a video game
Denying my situation's reality.

Another minute of headphones, please!
All thought gives way to the melody
An excuse to set my mind at ease
But such freedom is never truly free,
At the cost of precious missed opportunity
Accumulation of inertia, overwhelming apathy.

Bother me tomorrow
Today I'll buy no sorrows.
Instead I kick cans
Down eternal roads
I skip stones
Across rivers of dreams

What choices am I making
Every moment of my life?
What paths am I taking
Directing me to strife?

I refuse to answer those questions
And sink into blissful, cowardly oblivion
It cannot last forever
Meanwhile problems fester
Multiplying by the million
Like cockroaches consuming a decaying mind.

Bother me tomorrow.
Today I'm blind to sorrow.

61 lines, 321 words. Intended to have a loosely patterned, song-like quality. (Maybe more like a rap?)
Written for the ""Like a Song" Poetry Contest"

Chosen prompt: "bother me tomorrow, today I'll buy no sorrows" from the old CCR song Looking Out My Back Door.

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