I Should Be Fighting So Much Harder

Every child I see
Uses their eyes to demand
that I fight for something.
But only because they haven’t learned the right words.

Haven’t yet learned
how to form the necessary syllables to ask why
with the accusation it deserves.

To sound out the sounds of sentences like:

”Why, does everyone pretend
like everything is fine?”
Like, “why did you care more about weekends
than the crimes of the time?”
Like, “why the fuck did you close your eyes
to all the glaring red signs?”

My sister gave me a niece.
She is beautiful with kind bright eyes
just like her mother.

Will grow up with the hard focus
and soft faith of her father.

But I don’t always like to imagine the world
those eyes will come to focus on.

How they will look at me
(if I am lucky enough to live so long)
with a look that asks “but how?”

”How do you choose to drink over think,
how can you stand proudly
on two fully functioning feet
Instead of marching them through the street?

How did you not see
how every easy thing you have
is torn from the flesh of the meek?

How do you not smell
how the rotting world reeks?”

It has gotten to the point
that I can’t stop my brain
from starting to overheat.

So I shut it off.

Is it my job to solve the problems I inherit?
Can’t I just distract or parrot
the same sad excuses of:

”economy
don’t bother me
I have a life to live
this is my time god dammit
if the world is god damned
it’s not mine to save.
maybe the planet planned it.”

Then I see the questions waiting behind a watchful child’s eyes.
Know they will ask me if I tried.
Know they will wonder if I cried
in a nice comfortable bed —

instead of fighting.
Of tying myself to the tops of tall buildings
and demanding the lighting.

And if that doesn’t work,
then strapping a battery to my back
and doing my own god damn damning and striking.

Instead of quitting my job
and my “but maybe”
and my false fake fucking sense
of fake false fucking safety.

I almost fear children
for the day they will shame me
and how they make the call to fight feel so right.

about feeling like I have to fight

I Should Be Fighting So Much Harder