• If the world is ending now,
    It’s not because of bombs or blood
    But one hundred million parents forgot to say “I love you”
    To a crying child
    And one hundred million lovers misunderstood a word.
    Meanings skewed,
    Grassy hues on dirty jeans
    Scraped with open knees un-kissed;
    Ring-Around-the-Rosie ends the same way again
    And millions more suffer losses unseen, unheard
    Without water
    While millions more drink Dasani and Aqaufina -
    Empty bottles strewn on empty streets
    By empty people with empty tanks
    While empty corporations
    Fill their empty lives with green hues
    Similar to those on dirty jeans
    The dirty lives of two hearts
    Or two billion hearts
    Or six billion scraps of discarded soul
    Floating on a ball of rock revolving around fire
    Doomed from the start
    All good things –
    Do they have to end in screeching halts,
    Or puffs of silence,
    In dorm rooms of colleges unattended?
    Attended or defended,
    Society sinks into turmoil over a spilled drop of water
    And mops up the mess with a bucket of life.
    H2O
    Bend and flow
    Grow
    Go
    Fade.
    The world is ending now,
    I see it in the eyes of a child
    Who doesn’t know how much I love the way he smiles;
    Gaps in teeth
    Love without knowing why or caring
    Trust infinite,
    Scared of the dark.
    So am I sometimes
    Turn off my light and stare into black-grey-red shadows
    Walk to things I don’t know
    To carry out a pair of green-stained jeans
    On a soul stained but still more valuable than
    Those little green papers that stained the soul
    Who walked away into darkness to retrieve them;
    I walk into darkness for you and the universe.