survival

I HOPE WE MAKE IT

I have no tolerance for hope. Hope survives
on leftovers and unwilling loss: a soiled casket of
emptiness for every six feet of paragraph
it wades behind. Hope stuffs itself between the words
and the meaning, loudly camouflaged by
gambling and cigarettes, declining to altercate but
lathered by a demand to be seen. It shuns you,
but needs you desirable, a voyeurist: a
lap dancing ghost to keep it current.
Hope is a pimp
and you whore yourself to keep it primed,
shedding your skin like a puree of missing passports,
onion tears soaking sensibility after raw
sensibility, riding hope faster than your hips can keep up,
because, and after all,
there has to be a better place than this.
Time is just an expanse to harness,
a mount for crossing –
and you must wager everything,
from soul to sex
to grind it hard to a halt.

DIVERSION

sometimes
I lose myself in you
whilst wondering
how I ever survived
without your distraction

WEED, THE PEOPLE

Led by foreign madness, we
– to long expected sleepless graves –
will swim to sink and drown in numbers
weighted down beneath the waves
with nothing left inside but shadows;
no–one left of worth to save

In one end and out the other
warring with psychotic pride, then
born again and made to suffer
– karmic purpose ill–forgotten –
each new chance at life, a buffer:
“Next time: change…” we chant inside

Cycles written, history leaking,
sorely weeping through the pores
of growing wombs and offspring born
– another child of soulless form –
to breastfeed lies, imprisoned, shrieking
time again: disease repeating

Sin ingested (soup for poor)
– the bile of shame and burden lost –
as people starve and lives are sold
and terrors planned to mind control…
and all the while our sickened bodies
hover, rotting, rank with worry

Toll the bells – it’s time to breathe
and weed this horror from our conscience,
steer ourselves towards a pardon,
pave the way, resume our garden
seeding spirit, heart, and mind
with growth to bloom for one last time
or we, the people, incarnating,
won’t survive beyond our mating