Sphere of Chagrin

Seeing the peril of the world came as a splash of ice water;

It found me, beat me senseless

until I, too, became numb.

We live in this place,

This sorrowful land,

Where fear is the ultimate puppetmaster.

Preachers moralize hate,

Disciples pray to money trees.

Students swallow their piles of homework as suicide notes.

The essence of time has become non-existent,

Just in favor of our consciousnesses.

Justice serves black holes,

Laws serve themselves a plate of “holier-than-thou.”

Genders, races, religion, identification;

We are being labeled by these pronouns,

And we’re following each other to the slaughterhouses.

Sin runs through water reserves,

Bullets become the new fertilizer.

Bombs puncture a child’s home.

It’s hunger versus obesity,

Poverty lies under a grave.

Cold hard cash paves roads,

Burying the sound of the screams that lay under it.

We are the only destruction of ourselves, the ones to fear.

Is this why we’re putting knives through our neighbors’ backs?

Why we’re cutting the cord of our humanity?

When does it stop?

When does it end?

We’re all pleading for mercy from a God we don’t know.

For help, call 911,

There’s an emergency.

But there’s no saving a world,

That does not want to be saved.