293/365

as a kid i believed in quicksand.
the terrifying notion that the earth
could swallow us whole kept me up at night.  
i imagined an alternate world beneath
the colloid of fine granular material;
or maybe there was silence, a sort of
timeless web of disenchantment beneath.

there was quicksand in my visions
of adventure, it was there in the places
i saw myself uncovering,
discovering, disappearing into:
at one with the yąnomamö or the bambuti.

places beyond space and time.
a (re)connection to true self-
misunderstood in the halls of davidson
middle school or the gap. it was the suction
of the earth into some unnameable space
that would help define what it meant
to be indigenous.

apparently it’s impossible
for quicksand to swallow
humans into the earth.

my people are not in a distant jungle
waiting for my return. they are you
dear reader, hunkered down in the dull glow
of a screen, perhaps gently stirred within
clicking (a) like into the void.

maybe there is quicksand after all.
it’s here in this cyber void,
sucking us all into its idle maw 

209/365

i’ve unlearned where to plant my allegiance,
carry it around like a bloated corpse,
heavy and putrid, sniffing for the ground.

bags of rotting seeds, every one
tossing their opinions at each other,
blindfolded, hands over ears
spewing entitled nonsense.

red faced toddlers screaming
at the walls closing in.
prisoners in a perpetual fit of pique.
too busy taking umbrage
to ignore. stay quiet. listen.
find sympathy. birth empathy.
say, “i don’t know.”
this is not my battle,
my position irrelevant.

they wanted us all to have a voice
but didn’t warn of the tedious tumult.
the unbearable racket every time
we disappear into these evasive screens.

none of it will satiate
this wildly growing hunger.
how are we meant to be sustained
in the futility of factlessness?  

i’ve unlearned where to plant my allegiance,
carry it around in a satchel of dandelion forets,
wanting to be blown to oblivion.

Helpless

I don’t know how to write about the sadness. I read the tweets, the articles, the opinions. I watch the videos. Getting angry is never enough. I would like to think that I can somehow add something to this madness, but the truth that is becoming more and more apparent is that the Internet is showing us injustice, evil and cruelty on a minute by minute basis. We can now watch murder, racism, terrorism, mass shootings, and the reaction or inaction to it all just as fast as we scroll a feed. But maybe we were not built to process the world's suffering.


We get angry or indignant. We make excuses or choose up sides, but in the end we feel powerless, because a like or a sad face or a blog post will do little to fix the horror we see online. The world is open and dying right in front of us everyday, but we are helpless to act. We internalize and try to connect, but our hearts are not big enough to deal with the oppression and injustice writhing in our screens.


This is going nowhere. I need more time to process.


…


In contrast- it is July. My life is good and easy and safe. The guilt is nothing compared to what so many people out there face each night before they go to sleep.