Hopes & Prayers Is Something You Say to Allow Yourself to Forget

& I don’t even offer that.
Empathy weighs less than glory, holy things worth more bloodstained.
This a privileged view, cherished one.

Anyone who says love can save the world
is either naïve, rich,
or someone who knows terror, understands directly
the despotic caress
of devastation.

In the last two years we’ve lost half of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef
while I’ve learned I don’t know how to remember anything happy
& I don’t always have to take the full pill,
though this revelation is still theory crafting.
I’ve also learned I rarely ever think about losing half of the coral
in the Great Barrier Reef. This mind of mine mine, narcissist narcissist I.

To kill one man is to kill mankind,
to save one man is to kill death.
The woman who taught me this,
criticized online as a “camel fucking jihad retard,”
was kind.

I watched footage of dead Syrian children in a chamber, hollowed by sarin gas,
foaming mouths, eyes protruding, pondering up
to a god they have, for this first time
& far too early
doubted.

The mothers’ pain must have been unbearable;
they weren’t cradling their children,
but clutching their own throats. The thumbnail for the video
made it look like they died strangling themselves. Maybe they did. I’d not blame them.

All of this while taking a shit
browsing Reddit, thinking to myself
why is it so hard for me.
(It annoyed me the shower mat was wet, I remember,
because it made my feet cold.)
Knowing I’d be the first
to demand justice
had this happened to my family,
had my world been depleted,
though because it did not,
I wiped, flushed, & moped the day away,
furious at my roommates
for not replacing the hand soap.