[[albert camus was a poet, of sorts:
a philosopher by nature // by nurture,
but a poet by circumstance: one must imagine
that camus knew his thoughts were artistry,
that he spoke them into the atmosphere
with stanzas dripping down his tongue.
perhaps he was a fatal optimist: cursed, like sisyphus,
into an eternal damnation of rose colored glasses.
how can one imagine sisyphus happy?]]
sisyphus used to be happy, i’m sure:
laughing himself to sleep as he cheated death:
outsmarting olympus with his very existence
he is what i wish i could be: he is me in dream-land
and i am not happy. i cannot imagine sisyphus happy.
sisyphus lived on borrowed happiness, manipulating his way
back into the sunlight, bathing below the smiling moon.
powerful for only a moment’s notice, until his rebellion becomes fatal and zeus decides his fate. what becomes of a hero who never dies?
a man who fades from his pedestal // infamy into unimportance, blurry martyrdom an amoral protagonist who is fresh out of luck, a soldier whose white flag was forced out of his chest as he lay alive
paladins are not supposed to become victim to monotony:
their very existence rests on adventure, on sin.
albert camus relishes in the moments trapping sisyphus in despair:
he fetishizes the descent of a tortured man and he seems to think
sisyphus has won in these instances, the poster boy of existentialism
posing for his critics and fans
& he can no longer remember a day in which he was not conjoined with his boulder, but still i wonder if he reminisces on his con:
sisyphus tricked even the devil into allowing him to live (could i do this, too?), an antithesis to satan’s very own agenda, and he almost got away with it. if love had been enough, sisyphus could have been penned into immortality with ares and athena, but his love, drowning in ulterior motives, could not satiate the residents of olympus,
and he was met with a fate far worse than death:
at least in the underworld he could have rested.
albert camus was wrong that sisyphus had control over his fate
(did we read the same myth?)
and that his domination procreated joy: akin to a rose growing through concrete, absurdity on a gray background.
i fundamentally disagree with the words of albert camus,
for i fancy myself a modern-day reincarnation of sisyphus,
in case that wasn’t obvious before.
i am a creature of habit, a girl married to routine and
surprises short circuit me but
if i were sisyphus i would let the boulder flatten me,
see if god cared enough about my suffering
to inflate me back into despair.
but now that i think about it,
the days i feel the emptiest are the days
with no agenda: no stoichiometry or calculus
to busy my diluted mind, rotting into my couch cushions,
closed lips atrophying from prolonged disuse,
and maybe sisyphus was grateful
for this lifelong insurance against destitution
but what is really worse, is it forcible monotony or
a desolate gregorian cycle: january to december cursed
with voided concert tickets, canceled picnics:
(sorry guys, i have to fulfill my eternal punishment today, maybe another time?) & // but i am a sisyphus by my own design, a pathetic photocopy of the boulder and the hill, my fate was inked by my own hand, and i am devolving into my devotion to desolation: alliteration is my makeshift ventilator, and i was never strong enough to teeter on the edge of completion, only to be met with reinjury--
anyways, back to camus. he was wrong, because no one whose brain
is rotting into itself can find enough room for happiness:
all that is left is the muscle memory of failing before a climax
and this is why i will always lose, why sisyphus was a prophecy foreshadowing my birth why, given the chance, i would damn albert camus into the hell sisyphus left behind for insinuating that joy can be found in torture. he may be a poet
but he is not a realist, he could not possibly think that a man who
knows his endless // cyclic fate could fathom a potential escape:
the krebs cycle // ATP production // photosynthesis stop for no one except certain death and camus does not factor this into the equation when he considers the psyche of a programmed man.
perhaps camus was nestled into a bush on the hill, watching day in and day out as sisyphus labored: projected demons onto a suffering man,
a man to whom he could assign a happily ever after,
a resolution past the one laid bare and skinned before his eyes.
and here i am, trying to read the mind of two dead men: i am wasting my time trying to understand why camus penned absurdity into eternity,
why sisyphus did not find a way to kill himself,
why i cannot simply try to imagine him happy?
Jillian Thomas is a 17 year old poet from Pennsylvania who writes about love, loss, and outer space. She has been published in Footprints on Jupiter, Ice Lolly Review, Levitate, and Mollusk Lit, among others. In her free time, she runs a literary magazine, listens to music, and skis.
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