Broken and guilty

I want to write the poem that changes the world
I am not at all afraid of writing it
or of trying

I have been broken by experience enough to know it will be difficult
I have stepped into the tempest many times

I want to tell you that if you are taking sides
Your voices have lost meaning
You are yelling into a wall of sound
I am not interested in your intentions
I am not invested in your hopes or wishes
What are you doing
What are you doing

I am listening for the whispers
I am listening for the snot covered tears
I am listening for the swollen bellies and the falling trees
They are their own cacophony
What the other noises are trying to drown out

Sure, they are crushing me
I am dying every day
That death has been meaningless for so long
I have made myself a shell to be king of
I have hardened my heart with the myth of being powerless

Can I appeal to the child in you
Even as I know that we each accept the death of innocence
That we look on our beautiful children with sadness
Knowing they will each be smashed by our unwillingness to change
If you think we are unable you are a liar and a weakling
What are you doing
What are you doing

We who built the pyramids
We who wrestled the rivers
We who created and destroyed the gods
We who pierced the fragile cupola
We who have overwhelmed the internet
We have seen the edge of what we can see
Short-sighted like Alexander
Let us conquer ourselves now
Let us look inward and outward, but not beyond

I want to write the poem that changes the world
but I don’t want to trick you
I don’t want to hold a mirror and force your eyes open
I will not use guilt if I can help it
We all know these things
They rise up in us every time we see a human reaching out for their potential
They rise up in us when we see a father and son giggling
or a mother holding her child
They fall down with each senseless bullet
With each bloody knuckle or boot
With each hate-filled word
With each dollar spent despite the muddy morality

I know that life is heartless and space is cold
but you are an impossible wonder
From star dust
Born of lightning
From single cell to this
A chooser of possibility
A master of determination
We have to try to remain open
We have to live through each experience
We have cling to one another
We have to care
I know it’s hard
Harder than it should be
It comes with the territory
A part of being impossible

Look at your history
Study the larger compass
Where are we going
Why
What is the purpose of all of this
What are we doing

I was not willed into existence
to burn this planet down
to ravage every resource
until I lay crying like a newborn
At the teat of the desert
We have stopped making sense
We have forfeited control
We are audience to a manufactured fate
This is not how it’s supposed to be
There is so much more than this

People with picket signs aren’t handing hugs out
Being right doesn’t feed the hungry
Selling drugs isn’t a way out any more than doing them is
Don’t you dare trust people hundreds of miles away
to do what needs to be done right here today
Don’t you dare think, but what can I do
What have you tried
What are you doing

I want to write the poem that changes the world
This is probably not it
I hope it is a beginning
The star dust that becomes

I want to tell you each and all
I love you
I know that there are limits
I know that you have tried
I am so imperfect
I am amazingly flawed
Broken and guilty

But there has to be a way
There has to be a change
You know it to be true
Look at me
Look at yourself
Look at us
What are we doing
What are we doing