Like live cultures we ingest without tasting,
and viruses we contract by accident,
hope
lives within each of us
without license
like one of a thousand daily motions
it takes just to keep breathing another minute.
It doesn’t age like skin
or degenerate like the brain over time.
It does not respect the laws of man or science;
cannot be manipulated by reason or exhaustion.
Like a city full of young adults
hope never sleeps
and lives by a code of arrogance
as though it will never die.
We’ve had many conversations,
hope and I,
like lovers trying to divorce kindly.
But in the end it always gets ugly
and she takes more than half of everything that used to be mine.
I fill my thoughts with the most hopeless content,
negative verbs, name calling and verbal abuse
like a drill sergeant breaking down privates
face down in the mud and convulsing for air.
I break like I’m supposed to and retire to my bunk
but in the morning there’s not a single bruise.
It’s, not human.
I pray for it to end like physical pain.
I barter for death or disease in its place
but, every plea remains unanswered
like a message in a bottle
that’s lost buoyance
and been swallowed by the sea.
It splits me in half
like God and the Devil weighing on my shoulders
until they each dive into an ear like pool water and become allies.
They speak in unison so that I cannot tell evil from good.
They become it, like a monster in a movie
whose body always goes missing
when it should have been dead so many times
that you want to stop watching, but can’t.
I beg for it to leave like a guest uninvited.
Give me a rest,
I ask on repeat like a song that’s lost its novelty.
Let it lie, I warn,
like a sleeping dog with an appetite for red meat
and heightened sense of sound.
But, hope remains deaf and defiant, like a toddler entertained by noise.
I’d volunteer for ECT, if it could be shaken it from my head
like a spell of mental illness that’s reduced my quality of life.
But, it runs deeper than disorder and higher than volts.
Every night, I carve out every last cell I can find,
bone to vein
but, when I wake up in the morning its grown back again.
I flood my brain with realism
like a hydrant flushed into the street,
still the slightest percent of chance prevails.
Magical thinking will fly on auto pilot into the ground
before taking orders.
Hope is a phantom pain
even after I’ve severed all its limbs.
I’d euthanize it like an elderly patient
even if doing so implied my own suicide
just to wipe the smirk off its face.
Its only real nemesis, blunt force truth
I don’t have the balls to ask for.
Instead, I sleep inside ambiguity like a blanket,
like a coward,
too afraid to be direct
as though it were the boogeyman sure to devour me feet first
soon as any part of my body was left dangling out.
It knows me and this.
The cost of killing it is a void nobody wants to know.
And so, hope lives. _________________ shemovesme.wordpress.com
Sat May 05, 2012 8:16 am
MysteryGirl Moderators
Joined: 02 Jun 2007
Posts: 3419
Location: I come from a land downunder
Oh Brach girl, you slay me, you so do......yes, hope lives. And, 'they' say, we should be grateful for that but sometimes the cost is just too hard to bear. I said as much recently to a friend who could see I was still smarting from a breakup 5 months ago and asked me why it had hurt so much when it had only been a short r/l and I had as much as admitted it wasnt the love affair of the century. Nor had my heart been broken (Guess that only happens properly once).
My answer was "because, for the first time in a long while, I had let myself hope jus ta little" and that will wound you to the core every time.
Your way with words continues to amaze me.((((((((((Brach))))))))))))
HugZ, MG
PS I kept thinking about another poem about hope that had been published on Mels once in a slightly more humerous vein, but with the same theme. Here is a link to Moonshine's great poem, Pandora, for anyone who might be interested.
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