0176: What happens when you get copied?

Location: Melbourne, Australia

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Poem:

I thought I knew what running felt like:
fast heart, flushed red cheeks,

Legs heavy with an acid they call — “lactic”.
Left hip tender, right knee tight,
hamstrings twitching, two calves scared with fright.
Hunched over, hands on my knees,

Trying to make friends with oxygen/
Puffing, Heaving,

I asked the people around me? Am I a runner yet?
Coach gave me spreadsheets,
and a heart-rate strap.
Above one seventy five on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday

Below one thirty, on the days your legs don’t feel like talking.

Follow your feet, follow the signs,
Follow the roads, follow the tree-lines.

Just don’t follow the people on your screens.
What they’re selling isn’t a feeling,
it’s a pdf wrapped up in pretty colours,

Trying to sell you some kind of self-healing.

And if you see straight through it,

You’ll go back to the start.
Running way too hard, stress-fracturing
wanting more of your racing heart.
This isn’t running.
No, this is an output.
A byproduct of a curious mind,

An interpretation of something divine.
So what am I feeling? - A tall man stops me in my tracks.
He says “I’ve been doing this fifteen years”
l look him up, I look him down,

Supposedly, he’s running this town.
He’s got bright yellow laces,
and a hat I’d like to wear.
Shorts that go from Copenhagen to Berlin,
An agenda he wants to tear.
I’ve been in this game as long as you,
I’ve had my heart broken,
and my hands too,
yet after all these kilometres, I’ve left something unspoken.

So I’ll tell you what it feels like… Mr man.

Running is a movement that rips me apart,

But never leaves me lonely.
Running is a place I pray,

But it’s not my religion.
Running is my place of clarity
but it’s not my ocean.
It’s the home I choose to return to,

When the walls of the world shake.
It takes me to the people,

Who dare to hold a heart, my heart.
It shows me the way through,

When the signal drops out.
But that’s not it.
I go back to the streets,
back to the red walls, and my red cheeks.
I follow the white lines,
I paint the white words.
and one feeling comes up.
Running feels like something true,
a rebellion against the world I knew.
If I had to choose one word to save,
Mr man, the word I know,

Is brave.