We look past meaning, still blinded and dreaming of riches,
Which leads us toward track homes and condos, cruel chapels
While the hapless live in the world’s mansion: the most open convent
And what we don’t see is sometimes the crux of our content

The streets offer a morose array of the discarded
They, the wise and most wretched, who humbly suffer
Are perhaps the truest, comely Christian-hearted men and women

They bless the day as they pray to the ground
Where cracks become twisted crucifixes upon which
The most selfless are displayed for public derision.

Ironic is the formula written with precision on the tome of our existence
Iconic moments of pain bloom into the banks that loan out inspiration

Each electron is one thousand eight hundred thirty-sixth of its proton
And this proportion, though grandly and numbingly unimpressive
Is the basis upon which we live and whir and spin as matter does
Coincidence is a lie in the face of the certainties within what we cannot see

For, though one decade separated the births of Crockett and Bowie
And, though their names might conjure knives larger than pockets
And hats, stolen from conquered bandit-faced creatures’ tail ends
It was on the same 1836 day that they evolved from flesh into legend.

Joy is a strange element that seems to come and go without a plot
Yet some know how to wield their emotions with little thought
As if joy and love were as a hammer worn neatly at the belt

So, I yearn for one day to grasp a handle in a hand that has never felt
The shape of certainties, once discerned as chance and circumstance
And when the hammer falls, I hope it breaks a twisted crack into my heart

I hope to, from my reflections, thus bereft,
Find some perfection hidden deep in death
As one might decipher, through foreign language,
A light that warms within a sonnet

In a way, I think my life depends upon it.