CALL ME BELOVED

What can you do when survival is all that’s left,
when you feel the color washing before your eyes?
We sit around in clandestine circles, brooding,
that we can extract the joy from our lives,
and we never stop to fill each other’s holes.

I look at myself in the mirror. I look within.
I should not, I cannot bring myself to complain,
but the days bleed through and I cannot ignore
that daily, gnawing hunger that you feed with
meager accomplishments and yet it screeches
“what’s next?” and I cannot, I should not answer.

Maybe that’s what we’ve lost. Maybe that is what
should punctuate the filling of our glasses –
those miraculous strings that pull us together,
that we should be so fortunate for chance to favor us.
The days bleed through, we grow fatigued from
the daily, arduous climb. We come together,
but we just end up tripping over the strings.

revised 8/10/10