Yesterday, while waiting for a bus on the corner of Newbury Street I found God. She carried a burlap sack over her shoulder a map of the world in her right hand and a bottle of whiskey in her left. She asks me where I’m headed and I tell her I’m running. She tells me she is too She says: “ It all started when I was a kid, I held the solar system in my palm and took the colors from the palette of galaxies and finger painted the Earth.” I took something that was nothing and made it everything. And every day since, this world has thinned me. Asking too much out of something too little. I fear the darkness that was created from the light I produced. Some days, all my body can do is act like the Earth and tremble. And in the deepest hour, my heart grew heavier than the sky that watches us all so I let it go. I let the pain rain down like morning dew getting caught on people’s cheekbones.
I want to purify the air and our oxygen of all that is unjust in every atom. When I look into your eyes I see bigots, I see sexists, And killers And I want to want to rid our days of the night but I can’t. So instead, I hit children. May they stay forever full of laughter and light Of pigtails and play-doh and gummy worms and popsicle sticks. white dresses and untied shoelaces. In a world where guns double for dignity Where love is a receipt Where self-worth is measured by grade point average. Dare not the dark fault their fair eyes. Dare their souls not fall victim to the tainted being that is our sleepless nights and alleviated anguish. When I look into your eyes, I see hate. But when I look through them, a see a child. And so I lose myself on the bench of a bus stop on the corner of Newbury street. Watching the world tumble down like a toddler learning to climb a staircase. In my absence, the polluted cloud that makes its bed on our sky dissipates among the rain storms. Should you run, you steal light from this fading life.
And I say to her Show me how to be the bravery I ever so seldom see in the world. I wanna lift bridges with poems And I wanna lift poems out of my warm breath.
And she tells me
What rocky roads you have in front of you. What hands you have yet to hold. But I’ll tell you one thing You’re already something And something’s better than nothing And that is everything.