I need to reassure my cynicism. It wavers, sometimes.

I need to read poems about consciously being mad[ly] in love.
So much so that we now use the clichees consciously, defying
Both those who use them ignorantly, as commonplaces,
And those who studiously avoid the pollution,
And so Proclaim to the World that our love Subverts Conventional Meaning-
Ours is Language and the World that's in it!
While believing, beneath, that it's all just hormones anyway.

I need to attend plays of socio-political Worth.
Nod vigorously in self-righteous assent, like everybody there,
Be suitably dressed, nothing too bourgeois, like everybody there,
Critique State oppression, middle class Conservatism and Indolence-
But I can never prevent those popup points:
My family's Middle Class. I don't know who the State is. I don't see
What use it is to the downtrodden that I use my leisure time
To nod vigorously at their hurt.
I need to believe that they'd stutter, ashamed, helpless, without answers.

I need to imagine those scenarios, you know the ones,
Where my friends turn out to not give a damn,
The men I love forget me, my family dies on me
[The self-absorption reaches its peak here but,
Threaded through the shit, can you see the naive trust?]
I die, and nobody cries
[Wryly smiling, viciously reminded
That I am not free of the proverbs, Chinese, Yiddish, mother's]
To remember, grateful for the harshness,
How little I have grown, contrary to unreasonable certainty,
Or hope.

I need to hear of people who have done badly
Despite being born with effortless perfection,
To despair, fear though never pity,
Throw up my hands, exasperated at the futility,
To Believe, desperately, and realize the familiarity
Of it, like I never stopped doing it, and
Hope that that is true, to mitigate the petty calculatedness.

I need to be reduced, to be crushed and trained to cringe,
Because- one final confession-
I cannot live in the moment, extempore,
Steadily leaving the minutes behind, like emission trails;
I am tied to each one that passes as if I gave birth to it.
I cannot easily turn my back on
Lost friend, disappointed hope, on emptiness,
Without practice.