Often I find myself frantically tapping my pockets to find no phone and then I must scramble to find the closest variant of pen and paper. More often than not it is the worst combination. On this occasion, it was kitchen towel and felt tip. Poems find me unexpectedly yet annoyingly leave me just as quickly. I must pull the poem from my brain and record it before it is too late. My brain is too fast most days and although I manage to keep up, there are times I am chasing it, and others it is dragging me behind it.

I wrote the majority of Mind Noise Two in the grocery store I used to work, scratched into the back of receipts and old promotion stands. I think often how people cope without writing everything down. Without the outlet of poetry or some other art form. How without it, I would've quite literally “lost my shit” working where I worked. Then I think about coping in general and how different our methods are to stay sane. And on multiple occasions, I have been recommended meditation in the sort of tone that suggests I need help because I have more energy than a nuclear bomb. Now believe me when I say I have tried but I feel too frantic too often to sit still for long enough for it to make any difference. That isn't me saying meditation doesn't work because it does but it a practice I can't seem to latch onto. So I scribble my feelings onto paper and do breathing exercises and on most days, do okay. I think there is a lot of social pressure on the things that help us. Magazine articles forcing hands and internet trends convince us certain stuff will help us not feel this or that. Then we feel this and we feel that and we blame ourselves but very rarely the thing. I know this has developed into a very unspecific rant but I am practically saying, not everything works for everybody and sometimes it's because of who we are and others it's because the thing is shit. Poetic, I know. Whatever stops the monsters going bump in your mind and whatever rips the claws out of your lungs then use it as a tool. We aren't all the same. Let me rephrase that and add some necessary punctuation. THANK GOD WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME!!! How boring would that be? It would be like reading 'Turtles All The Way Down' all over again and trust me, nobody should have to go through that. I love you John Greene but that was a strong no. I will scribble some words on some straggled piece of paper who'd thought its best moments had passed and give it life again and in turn, I will feel relief and the shifting of weight. We are human, all different and our survival is unique also. Find your happiness and find the things that keep the insanity silent and do them forever and in the grand scheme of things, I think we’ll be alright.

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And here is the ‘We’ll survive this poem’ rehashed and made into an actual thing:

We’ll survive this

Even when it feels like we won’t.

Even after we have convinced ourselves

we have already lost.

Even when we lose sight

of the hole in the ice,

believe me when I say -

we will survive this.

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