(written yesterday)

it is times like these when i can feel all the poetry seeping out of my body.


a week ago i was hanging out with a bunch of first graders.
in a classroom, i read to them. "my brother's name is aaron,"
one of them told me. "but he spells it with an 'a'."

"the fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
our stars and ourselves are, perhaps, inextricable, though.
a mix of stars and madness that creates the moment when a human being
can imagine hurting another human being,
hurting many human beings,
hurting the world,
hating the world,
a human being with no poetry left within,
all hope and beauty and words erased from what once was
—what began as—
a fellow
lost soul.

there is a problem with pain, but it is not an equation
any of you have an answer for. there is a problem with poetry,
poetry in the midst of pain, because pain is not beautiful, nor
should we pretend it is, nor should we string words together
in neat phrases, attempting clarity through anything as base
as art.

i am not writing this to prove the existence of beauty,
or the paradoxical presence of poetry and taking a gun
into your hand
and shooting
a first grader
who has a brother
named aaron
spelled
with an A.

i am not writing this for any reason at all.
the poetry is leaving me,
and so i leave you

with

this poem.