tighten your purse strings again and again
pull those velvet cords until they bruise the necks of those beneath you
choking the life out of your unwanted poor
and then find yourself standing atop a mountain of blood money
with no one left to pour your seven dollar iced coffee.
we are all so tired
the collective exhaustion of the world
peeks through my windows every single day
wheedling its way into my body
and settling itself in my eyes and mind
we are all so tired
it’s impossible to shake, this indominable fatigue,
because we know there is a better way
we are sure it is possible to live life
without so many unnecessary struggles
we are all so tired
and even though I have faith-
in people, in the world, in the universe,
in my absolute certainty that, one day, things will be better-
there are many days I want to lay myself down
and let the morning glories in the yard overtake me,
so that my body becomes one with the earth
and my mind can finally rest.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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?
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
