Truth Games

How are you?
How have you been?
I often wonder what
would happen if
we started just
telling the truth--
just a little bit.
Oh, a little mad around the edges,
how about you?
Me? Frantic and desperate
by turns. But did you
catch the game
the other day?
Game? I am fighting for my life—
do you really think
I have time
for any
games?

Measure of Hope

What is the unit of measure for hope?

A nanogasp? 

A nanogasp of hope to fuel one day.

A milliblink for one life.

If such a thing could be quantified,

no doubt a single centisigh of hope would power cities. 

A megadream of hope to make a planet.

A terafaith of it to expand the universe. 

No wonder 96% of the universe is missing.

It is not the matter that is dark*;

only that we are all trying 

to find that quantifiable atom—

we are all trying to hope in darkness. 

*Footnote: According to cosmologists as explained in Thirteen Things That Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks, “Almost all of the universe is missing; 96% to put a number on it. The stars we see at the edges of distant galaxies seem to be moving under the guidance of invisible hands that hold the stars in place and stop them from flying off into empty space. According to our best calculations, the substance of those invisible, guiding hands, known as dark matter, is nearly a quarter of the total quantity of mass in the cosmos.”

Observation of a Racist in the Wild

Eight kids—maybe 12 or 13–

Have claimed the top of the tallest jungle gym tower. 

No malice—just kids stacking up on a slide 

Wrestling gravity and conforming like sardines.

Just kids.

Until a voice twangs out—

“Ef you hurt mah son, ah weell cawll the po-lice!”—

What police? The fun police?

The non-Caucasian kids police?

The tween police? The grown up gestapo?

Whose only purpose is to smother spontaneous joy? 

molecules never touch

 The driver of the bus to hell—

her words, not mine—
said everyone in the place was going
except me.
She said i was too pure of heart

which left me reeling. 
What was she seeing? 
Some heart-on-sleeve long-suffering 
i haven’t been hiding? 
Some dogged class-clowning?
My willowy spine swaying in the winds
of our general discontent?
Is that really idealism
or am i just too damned exhausted 
with long grief and the longer-dawning revelation
of the impossibility of compassion—
the way molecules never truly touch
but we still feel friction—
just what i, in my secret arrogance,
think of as my cursed wisdom?

Activism

Why are the American youth all stressed?
Someone, somewhere said they're oppressed
so every one of them now think it best

all day, every day, to get that off their chest...

There is no silence like the silence

There is no silence like the silence
    of books in the early morning 

      when no one else is around:

It's a yearning silence

    like that of slowly opening doors.

        What is on the other side?

Sometimes it is the vast silence

    of alien worlds and sometimes

        the gentle silence of sleeping children.

At times, it is a jagged silence

    caught on the indrawn breath

        before a scream.

The silence of some books

    is made of the pauses

       in rhythm.

The silence of love, of loss,

    of hate, of consequence, of justice,

        of numbers, of philosophy, of planets...

There is no silence like the yearning

    of books in the early morning

        before anyone has opened them

looking for light.

Kyiv at Night

Through the window, I watch the lights.

Flares of brilliance--the skyline changes

under the footsteps of approaching giants.

No enlightenment, this, no celebration,

and certainly no brawling gods. This

is the hubris of men who barter peace

for power and make speeches

as warbirds scream above the lifted cries

of children.