His are not the first woes,
nor the first conflict with these perpetual foes.
His is not real pain.
“No, not construction paper cuts and crashing planes,”
They said, and came in out of the rain.
“A rat bit my foot off and it will never be the same.”
They would dare to take pity away,
Would strip everything else with which his psyche could play:
The addictive intoxicant of the lonely moon,
Stars that pierce the whiteness of the hospital room.
“It’s real, I heard it in a song!”
Dare say, “The black angel’s lyre rang wrong.”
What are angels when God is gone?
A pathetic delusion of the self,
Santa Claus and his little Arctic elves.
And so the affliction got worse.
The wound festered, ready to burst:
The mother cried,
the father sighed,
pilfered the essence of our price;
relatively, it’s been a regretfully easy ride.
No hunger.
No rain.
No guns nor knives.
Where are the Hitlers of our lives?
Ensconced in this ethereal void,
My only friend is an android.
The spirit is draining fast
under our feet and back in the past.
No more slaves to split the sea.
Tortured Jesus we’d rather be
Than master of this backward dog.
Resigned, we sleep like logs.
–Amir Lopatin