Still Hope

 

            The Daily News asks her for the dope

            She says, "Man, the dope's that there's still Hope."

                                                —Bruce Springsteen

 

The sun is trying its best to stay festive

though September's a flipbook, all slap 

and pratfalls and horrors and bees

growing dizzy on dwindling feasts.

 

There's gun talk and doublespeak,

troubling tariffs, some smoke without fire,

some fires that consume, and some

that remind me of nights in the woods

stripped of cellphones and cable TV.

 

The leaves turn in patches and soon 

the last page will stand still. It's a month, 

after all, full of hope in reverse. 

One day sandals, the next day, boots. 

Only late night and early dawn 

tell the truth about earth's roll away 

from the sun. Shadows are smudged 

at the edges, stale crime scenes 

with all the stale crime scene cliches. 

 

My country's divided, maybe irreparably. 

In Gaza, the people are starving, 

their homes and their hospitals rubble, 

and no one knows what to do to stop it.

Here, brown people are hunted 

by masked goons employed by the state. 

 

At the Mexican Independence festival 

in Beechview, the lot next to Las Palmas 

milled with people who weren't afraid 

to come out. Tacos and cakes, a full band,

stalls selling futbol and Selena T-shirts, 

caps bearing Jesus's face 

emblazoned in pop-star design. 

 

There's still hope, there's still hope, 

but it's dosed out and ghostly. 

 

Ukraine takes more hits from Russia, 

and no one knows what to do about it, 

like our hands are zip tied, but are they? 

How far will they go, the global strongmen, 

before we find a way to shut it down? 

 

I've been taking a dopamine precursor, 

biohacking my energy and mood. So far, so good. 

 

Next week: Rosh Hashanah. Next month: 

Halloween. In between, there's still hope if I look 

in the couch cushions, look on the ground,

look strangers in the eye until both of us cry.