This Anymore

Posted on November 19, 2025 by JRL

I don’t want to do this anymore.
The world is not doing any worse than it ever was.
We’re not going to hell in a handbasket.
We made up hell to convince ourselves this wasn’t so bad after all.
We imagine that things are going to get better.
We offer thoughts and prayers to make it so.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
I never thought I would get this old.
I never dreamed that as the world gets smaller and smaller, so would I.
When you say your first word, it’s hard to imagine running out of things to say.
But it happens.
At some point past your natural expiration date
you see yourself fading away.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
I’m having conversations to hear myself talk,
and I can’t stand the sound of my own voice.
Every straw man I can stand up
is on fire.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
I’m just so tired.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
I don’t want to talk about it.
I don’t want to grow, evolve, or develop into something else.
I don’t care what I’ve left undone.

It doesn’t matter.

I don’t want to do this anymore.
But what else is there?

19 NOV 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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We Aren’t Really Talking Anyway

Posted on November 17, 2025 by JRL

It doesn’t matter, anyway,
if you don’t hear a word I say.
And if you hear, why don’t you listen?
Does it matter what you’re missing,
if the words there in your presence
don’t much matter. Does it make sense
to pretend that conversation’s
what we after? It’s a new situation.

Does it matter, anyway,
exactly who says what, and when?
What difference whose idea it was,
when hopes and dreams and thoughts and prayers
all lead to nothing without action.

Why don’t I shut up?

17 NOV 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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The Last Present

Posted on November 15, 2025 by JRL

There is no time like the Present; 
that’s what all the pundits say.
They’ll be saying it next season.
It’s the one that got away. 

There is no time but the present; 
that just now and yesterday, 
the coming nexts or maybe soons
that occupy and stay.

Time is, just as a construct, 
one more useful set of bars. 
The less that you can see them, 
the more watchful are your guards.

It’s the ones you don’t see coming:
that’s what gets you in the end.
There’s that one defining moment, 
when we either break or bend. 

And at the time it seems like
even time has had enough. 
When things are tough all over, 
time is all you have to bluff.

There’s no time like the present. 
It’s like that in a sense.
Forget what you think you may know, 
that life experience,

And wander down the hall with me 
to some new secret room
where we can have time to ourselves,
until sometime in June.

15 NOV 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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The Soundtrack of Your Life

Posted on November 12, 2025 by JRL

The music that you listen to, that fills the quiet space,
is like the soundtrack of your life. Its sound describes the place
exactly where you’re at, and why, and what will happen next.

It’s not a mixtape or a set of songs. It’s more than that:
the foley artists earn their due, painting in sound your steps,
the voices in your head, the creaking joints and bones.

The music isn’t just a backdrop, mis en scene, against which life
unfolds without attachment to the meaning.

The soundtrack of your life plays on. Is it something new?
Is the music just rehashed for a quickly pulled together sequel?

12 NOV 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Time The Changeling

Posted on November 6, 2025 by JRL

What has been need not always be what is. 

There is a sense of time that must erase the world that is what was and  built the now.

Against such force, what armed and booted thugs can stand and keep their sense of distance from the truth?

What is and always seems to be the stone against which endless, mindless flint is drawn?

The world may still endure the flames and from the morning’s ashes rise a phoenix. 

What will be must evolve from what it is.

There is no secret alchemy of fire to draw out from a well of empty space the light that has no heritage of dark. 

06 NOV 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Aristotalitarian Logic

Posted on November 1, 2025 by JRL

The world is like a file folder system in which everything has its right folder, label, drawer, shelf, cabinet, space, wall, room, floor, building, block, neighborhood, suburb, city, metropolitan area, county/parish, region, state, country, continent, land mass, planet, etc.

And your whole life is spent figuring that out.

So there, you’ve saved a minute. Don’t thank me.

Now imagine your every waking thought and most of your sleeping ones are spent doing that too. Oh, yeah, that’s right. You already do that. You’re neurotic as hell.

The only thing that cures it is knowing bullshit when you smell it.

And the courage to trust your nose.

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Between a Place and Hard Rock

Posted on October 31, 2025 by JRL

I love hearing songs I haven’t heard in a while. That’s why I’ll test drive streaming service playlists like “70s Hard Rock” and hope for the best: that it will include essentials like AC/DC, Sabbath, Kiss, UFO, NWOBHM, BOC, etc., along with the usual suspects Zeppelin, Floyd, Bowie, Purple, Who, Stones. But skip Boston, Kansas, Styx, REO, Foreigner (after Double Vision). You can include Van Halen (Roth) and Aerosmith (pre-MTV). Maybe Rush (up to Permanent Waves). Don’t overdo the Cheap Trick or Nugent. LOL. And definitely put in some punk. I may 60 but I’m not dead!

We love classic rock because we remember a time when we were young, employed, had our own car (that ran), a little pocket money, a small bag of something extra, and a whole lot of things we absolutely didn’t need to take care of right this minute. Nothing but time and brain cells to burn. The good old days? I’d rather be here now. Having survived that nonsense. And not really missing it all that much. It wasn’t real either, then. It just took us a lot longer to find that out. Offline. Because online was only a dot then, not a com.

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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