The Immunodeficiency Of Our Collective Hearts

broken souls, broken veins

larger nightmares loomed before him-
broken veins, broken foreheads,
broken souls; this was the future of his
inner societies. not much different than
the outer societies, the ones that plagued him,
ruined him, sought him and
held. him. down. all the exact language of the world
could never correct the inequities of the
smaller nightmares. the haunted beginnings.

a painful week of bad news

dry, like a river ended in the desert of watching,
by vastness that swallows the whole
of this moment, this thing that never ceases even if it
runs dry.

this time, the dis-empowered stood up, grew
a century plant outside my front door. there is no tending
except to cut it down, hack at it, destroy it,
use it's dead succulent leaves to fill up the grand canyon

of heartbreak, the endless void of life

where we are writing our stories. from this
stalemate of the drought of our times

the pain, the process, the projectile in the air

now it dissolves into it's erratic and inevitable self. it stands
for all to witness, this thing that has crept through us for years
like a demon. this thing that never lets go,
a virus with no cure, an immunodeficiency of our collective hearts.

there in a street, in the void, a beautiful fire burning
trying to scald the awful thing away, trying
to melt it, trying to purge it, to exorcise our culture,
to cleanse our unwashed hands.

if we could possibly advance, if we could rid
ourselves of this excess, this evil, how can we imagine
we could do that without an upheaval, a violent puking of the inner filth
that thing is.

this pain: standing over there, on a broken corner, waltzing with the
shards of empowerment. this
process: a cultural breathing, the contractions and expansions of
change. the projectile in the air:

these are the years of the drone. be careful, tread lightly
when you step on that flag, as you re-imagine it to finally
represent
you.

past ourselves and outward

see where this thing is going. this
place in time can not last. the dream needs
re-imagining. this progress needs
to be overcome and taken
farther than we imagined. further than
we had hoped. where we can stop mid
sentence and consider:
what do we really want to say?

i close my eyes
and think of all the inner wars.
outward now. past ourselves and outward.