Numbness and Blue light

 
I took my guitar down
It's been months
Why does it feel like that?
It won't sing for me anymore
My fingers don't care, they're asleep
As numb as my heart
I put it back. 
 
Was I really so happy
That I could enjoy music?
Have passion about music?
Actually get excited about music?
I stare at the object and it becomes
Bizarre. Strings and wood and knobs 
Magnets. 
A thing, not a friend 
 
I watch the world die
It's what I do 
The only hobby left 
I used to do everything 
Now I just stare at a little screen
and read about death over there
Or there
People with only dust and bandages
My possessions embarrass me
 
Time is bleeding, billowing away
Thirteen years gone
Gone where? 
fumbled and spilled,
shot away on the evening news
By an owl with a rifle
peering deeply
A heart beating in the gloom
Patience patience
 
A young mother at Walmart
Her little girls face 
glowing
Her daughters new shirt
Skulls 
They chose that 
I wouldn't. I would not
It's death
Your child's a billboard for death
There's no land-mines
In your neighbourhood 
 
A woman with a severe dress
Told me about
Fear
Showed me pictures of kids
Pictures of misery 
destruction frames her 
Pretty face again 
A sickening juxtaposition 
 
I don't play guitar anymore
Or sing
I don't care 
I used to love music
I couldn't go to sleep until I played
 
That doesn't matter to me
Now I couldn't be bothered 
I can't tear my attention away
I check the news fifteen times 
I check with my thumb and scroll
I look at it all day
 
Looking at tears, reading about tears
It's taken over my mind
Everything pales.
Maybe this is wrong
There should be a way back
But I wouldn't take it 
Even if there was
 
Everyone go back to sleep
Succumb, melt 
Revel in perverse scrawlings
On a filthy wall
Enjoyed from a righteous distance
Engorge yourselves on crime
Such gorgeous actors 
A forensics test or an autopsy
Your children are in the room
Shut that off!
 
Leave their world alone
Let them dream at night free
Free from slaughter 
From terrible things glimpsed
In the blue hypnotic light
of the television
while handing you Lego.
 
Let them have peace 
Protect them 
Please
Don't let them 
Become like me
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This poem is about: 
Our world

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