The sting of hot tears
pierces the jadedness
shielding my eyes
from the intricacies
of all these tragedies
as feeling
finally bubbles over the edge
of my heavy cup.
Too many people have died this year.
No explanation can encompass this wrongness.
There are no words for the depths of this despair.
But we will see millions on our screens:
to proliferate opinions,
manufacture complacency,
ensure continuing consumption,
and rage against whilst perpetuating the machine.
I am weary of reasons.
Mind has ruled long enough.
Anything is justifiable,
twistable, edible,
ostensibly inevitable
when given the proper spin.
“No more ‘why’.”
calls this aching heart,
finally breathed into enough
for shock and disbelief
of humanity’s capacity for inhumanity
to melt into sadness.
Perhaps instead we grieve.
Grieve everything:
the lives of the victims,
the lost genius of the perpetrators
twisted by the insanity
of the ones who pay for guns
to wreak the havoc on the world
they will not look at in themselves;
grieve the viscous dystopia we find ourselves in
powered by the fear that hides
under every act of hatred.
And when enough tears have fallen,
like lava rising from the unrestable depths
to slowly and steadily transmute everything in its wake,
the heat of feeling beyond reasoning
will burn through our comfortable numbness.
Maybe we can start
to put our words
and our money
and our actions
where our hearts live.
And “why” will become the rallying cry
of hands planting seeds
of love made visible through lives indivisible,
and the memory that tears can also be of joy.