Desperate Times

I suspect we grew up believing

that Darkness wore only a monster’s face

or swirled, shrouded, in a mushroom cloud;

that one day our own children could go

past the garden gate and safely to school,

returning unshot, unstabbed, unstolen.

 

Perhaps our ideals—ages of ideas—

freedom, opportunity and all the lofty

stump-speech words are hogwash,

mere castings of mis-aimed minds.

Perhaps we are meant to be enslaved

by want, greed, violence,

misinformation and mistrust.

 

Except: Why the unquenched desire

for better? Why these frail,

beautiful humans endowed

with soul-language of every art?

 

Inspired by this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Expectations.