This is something on doubt.
Is it doubt or just a lack of understanding?
Do you doubt me or do I doubt myself?
Maybe I doubt myself because you doubt me.
What are you scared of? I wonder.
What about me. Free.
Makes you tremble, shake in your boots.
Who lied to you? I wonder.
There is no right or wrong yet your thinking makes it so.
Exist. Be. Move.
Flow like water in no particular direction. Or in every direction at once.
Upstream, down the river, underneath the surface in a whirlpool.
Still.
On the lake.
What difference does the outcome make?
When the only outcome to seek is any outcome at all.
It’s the doing. The having done that matters.
Not the applause or the statue or the finish line.
There is no finish line.
This is an endless journey.
No cover to open the book closed.
Don’t you see that?
I wonder about your journey.
Your footsteps from Tennessee to Los Angeles.
The trail you left behind.
The leaves you stepped on.
The dirt those leaves call pillow.
I wonder why as you walk you don’t acknowledge their existence.
If you only look ahead to your destination I gather you’ll never make it there. Because it is living you have been seeking all along.
Don’t you see it?
That you are passing up all your dreams.
Spoiling the ecstasy and wasting the trip.
Who or what planted the seeds of doubt?
I used to doubt that I’d doubt you now I doubt that I can’t.
Don’t be a slave to the manmade.
To the idols and their ideals.
Don’t be the leaf I carry until…only until it’s time for bed on the pillows of your path.
Because I doubt I can stay longer without starting to doubt.
The torture it must be to fear change and never go off path. When only then might I discover what I didn’t know I wanted but have never felt so strong.
Are you sad? I wonder.
Following the herd.
A one-way ticket to the house on the corner with the car-dog-cat-billy-sally climbing trees.
How’s that life? I wonder.
I’m on my third, or fourth, I don’t know.
Because I doubt I see the day I don’t stray from the path.
I am the boyfriend with no job. No car. No home.
I am your loser.
Use me up for the street cred you missed on the way.
Or am I actually your detour?
Did you see me coming? I wonder.
Why aren’t you running? I wonder.
Why am I standing here? There’s no quicksand around me… I wish the answers were as loud as the Doubt.
Osh Doucet is a queer poet, screenwriter, and content creator from California. He has roots in the Bay Area, and in Los Angeles, where he currently lives. https://oshwrites.com/about/
