sometimes you think you know something
anything
a little
a lot
everything
more than you did yesterday
in the end,
even if you did nothing but learn,
you know very little,
almost nothing at all
and that
is just fine.
waking up
it has been easy to be lost, lately
to slip in and out of days in a haze
running on autopilot
breathing, speaking, eating, being,
while thinking and feeling nothing at all
but now, for the first time in years,
I see the sunlight
and want to bask in it.
elusion
i am not a person who cries
i watch ten hours of tv in two days
read three different series of books
write forty poems
play the same videogame for four weeks straight
i am not a person who cries
but this is a thing i can’t avoid
and the tears come at odd moments
at the sink getting water
walking to the bathroom
picking a sock up off the floor
i am not a person who cries
but nothing else is enough
to escape this
heartache
i am made of glass
and my fragile heart has shattered all over the floor
if i bend down to pick up the shards
more of me will break
and soon
i will be nothing but pieces
A little bit of shine
Sometimes I am a riot of color
and other days a mottled grayscale
with dashes of slate blue
But most often I settle between the two
a melange of unsaturated colors dotted with radiant hues
the weight of my fears and sorrows
fading beneath shimmering pockets of joy
Power
why isn’t greed taboo?
why don’t we shun those who flaunt extravagant wealth
the way we shun convicts and felons?
why isn’t lying taboo?
why don’t we cast out those who tell untruths
the way we cast out the poor, the disabled, the elderly?
why isn’t failure to serve the public a taboo?
why don’t we ruin the lives of crooked cops and politicians
the way we ruin the lives of sex workers and immigrants?
why doesn’t society stand up for itself?
why don’t we the people have enough empathy
to stand up and say “that’s wrong”?
where did we lose ourselves?
where did we send our hopes and futures and dreams
with barely a whisper of dissension?
what do we do now?
what we’ve always done: remember that the power is ours
we merely have to reach out
and take it
a drop of paint on the floor
how does anyone perceive the world
with its painfully vivid colors
neons and primaries
acres of wildflowers
auroras and galaxies
a blistering explosion of the spectrum of light
how does anyone see such glory
and not collapse
under the weight of it?
it lingers
i am choking on nothing but air
it fills my lungs and settles in
dense and coarse
like a towel left too long on the bathroom floor
i can’t cough it up
or swallow it down
it just lingers
adrift
everything is wound up tight
my heart my chest my mind my voice
my guts are tangled, knotted, frayed
there’s fire in my lungs
and ice in my veins
there’s no hope of rescue
respite
or relief
there’s only one thought:
just remember to breathe
our best
the daily onslaught of bad news
permeates our hardened skin
it settles into our hearts
and makes the ache inescapable
on occasion there is a good thing,
a nice thing,
a ray of light
that diffuses the pain
but can’t take it away
some days we get through just fine
but other days
our best
is not enough.
