Dreaming on a Doomed Planet
You’re all making ends meet, while I’m meeting ends made.
I want to turn soft and lovely anytime I get the chance, but there are too many chances and I fear I’m becoming a marshmallow.
I’m tired of running myself into walls
In fact my cheekbone aches because I punched myself in the face
But I’m not crazy
That was yesterday.
Self-empowerment just makes me nauseous
Even when I feel stuck and suffocating
When nothing much happens out here
I have you, the sea,
And time
Which makes me feel like I’m winning.
I could move to Slovenia
Where the air smells like an alpine lozenge
I could create data sets of energy consumption and say
Yes! See I’m helping.
Instead, I wake up and make lists.
By afternoon I sink into oblivion
That’s just what existing on a doomed planet feels like sometimes.
But sometimes it’s pure magic. Hence the lists. Hence the anxiety. Hence the henceforth grapple and climb over the fence.
Scratched skin and
A snagged string left. Evidence.
Does anyone even care about poetry anymore?
Honestly. So help me god honestly.
I'm screaming underwater and my brain feels inflamed
What’s the use of trying? What does it all mean?
How do I get from here,
Crying in my pajamas beside a radiator and open window
A place where nothing fits right,
To there
Significant, a life,
LIvIng
a New York neon light
When all I can handle is cups of tea
And apple porridge and mismatched socks
And breathing in squares.
The thought of greatness is heavy with paperwork and self-doubt The paper is heavy with sins and landscapes
Cagey offices and competition
Filled up floodplains with word plays
It doesn’t add up to truth.
'Dreaming on a Doomed Planet' is about lots of things but mostly that feeling that is very characteristic of the current context when over arching issues like climate change make our own little pressures to be "successful" and "productive" seem irrelevant and how these two things combine to produce a very specific and unique feeling of anxiety. There's a push and pull in the poem that mirrors the flip flopping of the human mind. How can we grapple with being so significant and insignificant all at once.
Sophie Fitzpatrick hails from the wild West of Ireland and is a writer, painter, and activist. Her work explores the experience of being a human on Earth at this current moment and uses words to create personas, paint impressions and tackle the deranged thoughts we all think but might never say.