June 15, 2025

i scroll
and scroll
and scroll and scroll and scroll
and avoid looking at messages
because my soul aches with each plea
and i haven’t figured out yet
how to do
anything
really

May 29, 2025

the overwhelming ache
of knowing strangers’
wants
and needs
and their own aches

and feeling hopeless
and helpless

even while knowing
individuals cannot save everyone —

it is companies and economies
and governmental systems
that keep those in want
wanting,

and keep those in the place of
being able to give
here
and there
stuck
in overwhelm…

fuck capitalism.

where is our revolution
of kindness?

May 3, 2025

i don’t know how to stop my kip
from staring at their phone
reading the terrible news
and feeling worse
and worse
and worse
as the hours go by

because

if left to my own devices

i would stare at my phone
and watch videos of
on the ground tragedies
and feel worse
and worse
and worse
as the hours go by

and neither of us feeling worse
will change the things happening
halfway across the world
or right in our own backyard

we need to fill our cups
and have the hope
and energy
to put forth change
that will help
others
and ourselves

but
how
how
how
when everything feels so important
and hopeless
in the palms of our
hands?

December 8, 2024

i think
my “problem”
is that i have big picture
thinking
with tiny detail
brain
and that just makes everything
overwhelming
all the time

~~~

like
i can see the whole planet
and each conflict
and how the systems lead to suffering
and how it
literally
doesn’t
need
to be
this way
but instead of just thinking about the systems
i then ‘zoom in’ and see
each country
each family
each child
each breath of the earth
suffering
suffering
suffering
and i am stuck
because i don’t want to look away
for fear i’ve cheapened
their individual
suffering
and story
but it’s hard to hold
hundreds
thousands
millions
billions
of people’s individual narratives
in a brain trained to only concentrate on one’s own
so i panic
and breathe hard
and fast
and when the feeling has finally passed
there’s the guilt
there’s the guilt
and i know it’s all going to happen
again and again and again

~~~

so how in this world do i utilize
my big picture imagination and individual compassion
without falling into
obsession?
without falling into the chain reaction of
‘i’ve decided to help one thing/cause/person —
‘but wait, this other person has it worse/’
‘but wait, this other cause is more just/’
‘but wait, this other thing runs so much deeper
and has its tendrils in so many of the other
horrors of this world…’

how do i stop my decision paralysis
when it comes to helping
human decency?

[i honestly don’t know

do you?]

December 1, 2024

hungry for something
something that aches me
something that can’t feed me
but can barely
sustain me
hungry for the feeling
of feeling
sans hunger
sans want
sans desire
sans anything that could be conflated
as relient
on anything
or anyone

but

i can’t help but feel
a Palestinian child
with me
in my own hunger

and when i’m sated
at least physically
if not philosophically
how
is that baby
halfway around the world
doing
in a manufactured famine
in a dictionary-definition genocide

[are they still alive?]

November 5, 2024

we already voted
but if you haven’t,
please do

for those too busy working multiple jobs
to put food on the table
for babies they never wanted
but were forced to have

for the trans children living double lives
in states that would rather have them die
than live their full, honest truth
around parents who may, eventually come around
but they don’t yet have that proof

for artists
and freaks
and everything that makes this country
what it is
which may not be great
[but it never was in the first place — we’ve had growing pains
for hundreds of years,
but each pang
is a way
towards equality
and equity
and not going back
please, don’t try to go back,
the future is where it’s at]

we already voted
and for one moment
i felt a slight relief from this anxiety
that has plagued me
for over a year now

so please,
vote for my Grandmama, who died from covid in 2023
[you know, after covid was “over”],
and vote for Palestinians
and the Sudanese
and the immigrants who listened to our statue of liberty
only to be met with hatred and libel,
please
exercise your right
while you still
have it.

October 31, 2024

i want to write about halloween
and spooky times
and how much i love
this time of year

but i’ve been dealing with deep dark fears
of genocide
and our complicity in it
and how that makes political fallout
even more extreme
and i just want a candidate i can believe in
or a system i truly think is working
but instead we’ve got

this

[whatever this is
in terms of an american experiment
that probably shouldn’t have been tried
and we should have just left this land
and its people
alone…]

but i’m here
this is a fact
and there’s an ethnic cleansing happening half a world away
that i can see as i scroll in my own warm bed
another fact
and the choice between two candidates
two sides
of the same coin
still factual
and yet
one would bring about fascism
much
much
much
faster
[he has stated this in his plans all along — facts]

so i’m actually
for real
scared
afraid
for my life and liberty

and no, i’m not overreacting

[my favorite time of year
has been ruined by election anxiety
and i can’t even feel that affronted
because so much worse things are happening
all over
everywhere]

so please

vote

September 20, 2024

‘you’ve already survived all your worst days’
could be so helpful
so hopeful
but to me/to my always overthinking brain, i wonder if i haven’t
if i’m somewhere deep in my mind, and i’m actually unsurviving,
or if that just means that the ones i have survived
have been pieces of cake compared to
what’s coming
what’s coming,
and also, i tend to compare
i try not to, but it’s what my brain does
automatically
without me asking
and my worst day felt so bad in my mind
but there are others who have had to deal with external worsts
and they are going through that literally daily
as my country continues to aid the perpetrators
sending money and explosives to a country
that literally doesn’t need it
so why are we still providing
pieces of other people’s
worst days
worst days
worst
days
?