Smuttin

The air hangs thick with what they call 
the clutter of days, 
the unnecessary matters. 
 
To some, a mountain range of trivialities, 
a tiresome, uphill climb 
of emails never sent, 
conversations left unsaid, 
or said too much. 
 
To others, a delicate scaffolding, 
each tiny piece essential, 
a perfectly balanced Jenga tower 
of perceived importance. 
 
How long, one wonders, 
does the pendulum swing 
between the vital and the vain? 
How far will the feet tread 
on this path paved with perhapses, 
if the matters feel necessary? 
 
A driving force, this feeling of need, 
even when the outcome seems dust. 
And if the journey itself is the point, 
does the destination matter? 
 
Unconditional understanding waits, 
a quiet shore perhaps, 
but often shrouded in fog. 
 
WHO decides the weight of a moment? 
WHAT makes this task essential? 
WHEN is the right time to cease the striving? 
ON whose authority is this burden laid? 
 
All framed by ones own terms and conditions, 
a contract signed in isolation. 
Could this meticulous sorting, 
this desperate clinging to the irrelevant, 
be just a refined kind of selfishness? 
 
A retreat inward, 
into the soft, padded walls 
of one's own bubbled world, 
where the light refracts oddly, 
and the scale of things shifts wildly. 
 
Only they truly know, 
within that shimmering sphere, 
what is unnecessary for them. 
The forgotten chore, the ignored call, 
the ambition allowed to wither. 
 
But the echo travels outward. 
To others, these same actions, 
these seemingly wasteful motions, 
may hold a strange, vital necessity. 
 
Perhaps to do the unnecessary action 
is the only way to prove 
the boundaries of the self, 
to mark the edges of the bubble. 
 
For whom is this effort expended? 
What hidden ledger balances? 
When must the performance cease? 
Where is the audience that truly cares? 
 
The questions spin unanswered, 
a dizzying carousel of 'why bother?' 
 
And when the dust settles, 
and the perceived necessity fades like old ink, 
we look back at the discarded hours, 
the energy spent on shadows, 
 
was this necessary? 
The quiet, damning query. 
Was it necessary 
to construct such elaborate defenses 
around things that dissolved in the rain?

rap, trap 808 soul