After I fumble yet another conversation

About the miseries of war

That no one wants to be part of, 

I think of the world taking up arms, 

For whatever reason, 

Each and every one of them wrong. 

You wouldn’t have hesitated 

To shoot their chest-thumping down. 

But the world has changed, I’ve tried, 

Fear be damned and lost more than I care

To claim, been around long enough to know

The voice of reason is often lost in the telling.

I’m bruised, my knees yelp, my leash is torn, and I 

just need your voice telling me to ‘let go‘. 

What “let go”? I write you like a last-ditch prayer, 

Like always, a last heave from a smoker’s cough

Moving decades,  like I could turn an  empty page

Into one night sky, these words into galaxies.

 
And spin odes to the Northern Lights to say 

In disparate novae that I miss you. 

I’m sorry, I cannot control what lives or dies. 

I need a place to shelve my fears. 

To hold each moment close as a knife-blade

Nicking at my jugular.

Please, someone—tell me a poem can coax 

A bullet from the throat or stomach or lungs

Tell me that a poem can bring peace

When all the  manic hysteria is done 

Tell me what to do with my bloodied hands, 

My hands—what can my hands do now?