mine is yours
i keep wondering what kind of scenery i’ll have to walk through
for the truth to jar me out of such despondent disposition,
because when we talk about the geography of poverty
i shut the door and reduce it to a setting too far from my bed
i’m complacent and my eyes are fixed on the mess of material that retires in fields of decay.
and no matter how many times i see the portrait of sadness
and human rights melt like plastic over fire,
i tilt my head to the left and trade reality for candyland visions
of shopping malls and fancy dinners
of button-up shirts and nothingness television.
and i keep sitting in the chairs of comfort holding the bars of how i prefer to live—
in the lap of luxury, the throws of cashmere days,
high on the anarchy of my very own heart.
and so i keep wondering what it will take for clarity to come my way,
for it to come over me in the fast moving tidal wave of compassion.
so i can stop collecting all these fictional identities, so i can start knowing what i know.
because i’ve already flown over the ocean,
i’ve already seen the bottom billion— touched them with my fingers.
i’m suffering in my own way, in my temperature controlled self-entitlement,
with my frozen face of half-conversion, stuck in upper class conclusions of what’s okay.
but there are things that i resolve,
in my heart, in my wallet, in the sword that i will not carry.
oh god, give me an elevation change when it comes to want and need
and all the things that fall in between
because i’m living on the edge of how i want to live-
how i want to give a damn about light shining through the dark
and so i resolve for a better tomorrow to step into the room,
to shake underneath my feet and cloud the temptation of excess
i’m jabbing for better understanding of
what’s mine is yours in a market where all we do is borrow
artwork: jelle martens
