hold on in poetry

what you don’t know can, of course, hurt you
what you don’t know will still hurt like hell
it will devastate you, it will ruin you
but what you don’t know can only
hurt you blessedly the once
what you don’t know only hurts you
when it actually happens
what you do know will hurt you ahead of time
what you do know will hurt you on the regular
it will assault you with worry, with fear
with anxiety every day until it finally happens
it hurts even worse then when it finally comes
all the previous worry already softened you up

the only thing worse than having no hope
is having false hope, actually much worse
at least with no hope, you can still triage
you can move on to what’s still salvagable
what you can fix, what you still can do
false hope sets you up to waste time
on dead-ends or worse, the con-games of
those who’d exploit the falsely hopeful
the scams of the Long Island Mediums
cold-reading you the answers you want to hear
the rinse-and-repeats of racist politicians
telling you can have the job
all of your grandfathers had
all you must do is kill everyone
who doesn’t look like you
the morning mouthwash ads
telling you that you’re just
one more set of purchases away
from smelling good enough
to be worthy of love
false hope sells
false hope sells better than anything

what you don’t know can hurt you
but it can only hurt you the once
what you do know can hurt you
for every single day of your life
but the lies you tell yourself
to keep the used up hopes throbbing
those are the things that will kill you
let go of the old things gone
accept what can never come
or what can never come back
then find something good to hope for
something real something true to hope on
run with it and don’t look back
there are wonders still out there
just don’t fall for the lies and
don’t trip over your own fears either
eyes forward, not down to the ground and
not up toward things that can’t happen
just eyes forward
sing the song of your heart
there are wonders yet just
not the ones you were sold
but that’s for the better
the surprise is half the fun