what you love
you claim
what you despise
claims you
what you know
and remain indifferent to
explains you
what you do not know
and others do
reframes you
thus I
learn like mad
have opinions
avoid hating many
and love few
all in an effort to
surrender little
of myself
stories you tell
of what you see
become what people see
of you
stories you tell
of how you see what
you see become
your angle on what
you are
when pushed to speak
I over-explain
and therefore negate
how little I surrender
of myself so
I am learning
silence and
how to tolerate
the growing lack
of self-delusion
that naturally follows
people who are
indifferent to me
are killing me
by millimeters
I am learning
indifference to them
each lesson a bullet
fired in self-defense
this resultant loneliness
is an expression of
a kind of poverty
much like how after a war
a country
is often in ruins
its people walking dazed
by what was once familiar
having become indifferent
to its former self
they starve eventually
or leave
Dark Matter 
November 23rd, 2015 at 9:18 pm
Thought provoking……
“all in an effort to surrender little of myself”……..I get that.
“learning silence and how to tolerate the growing lack of self delusion”…… resonates sharply for me.
And I remember when it dawned on me that hardly anyone, including my children. even thought about me when we were not together; that unmarried people are not first in anyone else’s life, and what a shock that is for widows and widowers after long marriages……..
the war ravaged emptiness of a homeland destroyed and all that was familiar and comforting gone – really does sound like what that must feel like…and we starve by clinging to what was…..
It takes courage to start over alone and pretty much invisible to those in your new world.
November 24th, 2015 at 12:27 am
Yeah. Not easy and frequently sobering.
November 23rd, 2015 at 9:57 am
Choosing love not hate…
November 24th, 2015 at 12:28 am
Yup.
November 23rd, 2015 at 9:25 am
Love this
November 23rd, 2015 at 5:24 pm
Thank you.