Don't Meet Your Heroes

Once more

Once more

Once more

Once more

Once more

Once more

And then

Twice more

A different more

A different once

Something new

A goal

An idea

An expectation

An inclining

Of potential

Never satisfied

Always moving the goal post

Once more

Again and again

The work is never truly done

It’s a perpetual state of growth

Of

Adaption

Life

And the work

Just goes

On and on

And then a song

Comes on

And it builds

The lyrics

Are angry

Frustrated

Oppressed

And something builds in me with it

A pulsing of the soul

A surge of energy

I feel as if

The next once more I’ll encounter

I’ll smash through it

And continue

Dear Camus,

What if Sisyphus had the power

To smash that boulder

With just a single punch?

What if he could just leap over it?

What if Sisyphus ran through it?

What then, Mr. Camus?

Did you kill yourself in that car?

Was life too absurd for you?

Or was it just an accident?

Were you ‘The Stranger’, Mr. Camus?

Were you detached from everything?

Was that you, Albert Camus?

Why do so many intellectuals kill themselves?

I’m not saying that was you, Mr. Camus,

Because we don’t know, do we?

Once more, Mr. Camus?

Forever, once more?

Yes?

Then here we go.

Jumping into a once more

Because it is

What life

Asks of me

A new song comes on

And I imagine Albert sitting next to me

Sipping tea

With his legs crossed

And a lady sitting next to him

His hair is slicked back

Like usual

And his posture

Is relaxed

Too relaxed

The type of relaxed that gets mistaken for arrogance

I imagine walking up to him

And asking him

If he really did

Give up

I think he’d laugh at me

And tell me that I’ll never know

And then he’d whisper something in the ladies ear

She’d laugh

And I’d kick the tea out of his hands

And sock him right in his soft nose.

The lady would scream

He’d hold his nose

Catching the blood in his hands

And he’d try to yell profanities at me

Through his hands full of blood

I’d scream at him that he can’t give up

He has to be the example

He has to live his philosophy

They’d kick me out of the coffee shop

And he’d follow

His lady

Still in hysteria

“It was just an accident, Chester. It was just an accident . . . We lost control of the car - it’s true! You believe me, don’t you?”

I would see a sad man - covered in his own blood - about ready to give up on life.

And I’d say,

“Fuck you, Albert Camus.”

Then I’d punch him again.

“Fuck you, Albert Camus.”

Then I’d head out to face another once more.

-C.H.