trouble in poetry

We are all in trouble all the time.
That’s the whole point of being alive.
Trying to navigate that humanely and with good cheer.
Pretending otherwise won’t get us anywhere anyhow.
We’ve been trying to pretend things aren’t like that
for ten thousand settled years
with religions and economies
and kings and celebrities
and all it has gotten us really
is a whole lot of examples of how much more trouble
we get into when we pretend that we’re not in trouble
when we pretend that there’s some of us
who are actually perfect.

Take Oedipus then take Nero.
Take O.J. Simpson take anyone else
hoisted up as a hero and you’ll find
someone in at least as much trouble as you
and even though pretending we’re not
is what we think we’re supposed to do
it only makes things worse
it only exponentially
multiples the hurt.

There isn’t any magic
we’re all caged by mortality
we can’t lie ourselves perfect
but we can choose our morality.
But everything starts
when we stop pretending
that we’re not in trouble.

We’re in trouble.
We’re imperfect.
That’s life.
We can run around selfishly pretending
that we’re gods
that there’s gods
or we can help each other now.

Right now.
We can help each other now.