Whatever - A Poem by Clay Cumbie

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Whatever

Simple are the words thrown around

All while complicated corners of the mind yell

The heart drops, splits, and pours out to every distal part of the body.

The abstract becomes more conscious and clear

And the amusement of easiness becomes the new bore

Your whatever you want to call it is always whatever,

And your never is always whatever it is…

Whatever it is that moves us to where we are supposed to be;

scratch that one or two times, and test your sense of humor

  against his

Get a drink and sit in a chair and see what hits you

  in the face.

Maybe you’ll feel the guilt of never saying

whatever it was you needed and wanted to say.

Maybe a religious experience will oddly occur during an

  awkward prayer

And you’ll stumble across something you were never even

  Looking for.

Or maybe you never find whatever it is you were looking for

  in the first place.

It has been a long time since our last assignation

And I fear that whatever you felt for me is no longer

  there.

There is no way to romanticize this moment we casually and

  constantly find ourselves in

Trying to repel the distance between the brokenness which is

shared

 Only to return to the recklessness of despair and selfish repair

The telling is in the touch, while the touching will always tell

If nothing could be something or if something could be dead.

Looking out the window as the sprinkler hits the glass

I am reminded of how circular it all really is in the scheme of

  things

The new becomes old but the old never becomes brand new

Like recycled shoes that end up in a third world country

You begin to realize how important whatever it is –is

The clock suddenly moves in accordance to things of

  importance

Yet the irrelevant intrigues the slightest suggestions of

  comfortability

You find yourself dwelling on the nonsense that only drags

  You deeper into the “whatever it is”…

You begin to witness life in freeze frame images that quickly

  pass you by

Taking in every breath with a new thinking as to where the

  ocean meets the sky

Every step becomes softer, and every word becomes a dessert

  that you wish you would have had twice…

The empty willingness to wake up to a new day still surprises

  the strongest of minds

As we long for a new wind to blow in and rescue us from

  whatever it is we try to escape

The cold room we find ourselves in today, is telling to all

  who came to hear the message

As the eyes of many focus on a stone which carries the

  familiar last name,

You begin to realize the “whatever it is” didn’t pass you by,

  But is waiting for you to make it what it will be.

                                                -Clay Cumbie (2010)