back to zero
a poem about a young boy who is mentally disabled
and how he cannot understand counting, messes up the numbers
and so the poet teaches him to look forward to getting back
to zero

and look at us, consumed with the numbers, with the middle and ending
and rush through the beginning, rush through the zero
to get to the other numbers

we live too fast, live too little
and forget about those around us

we take, we rarely give
and we are forever not "getting it"

how can we push forward without being
pushed back
and yet we expect to be bombarded by acceptance,
to be able to get to the finish line with little
to no effort

we should be shamed of it, the way
we sit near each other and never speak

the way we see strangers suffering and
do nothing to help,
we turn our noses up,
close our eyes and
ramble on the phone as if
we do not actually see

and i hear around me the voices that claim
to be of reason
and yet they really do not understand the definition
because reason implies sense and sense implies intelligence
and intelligence is something that cannot be applied
you either have it or you don't

and i hear them around me, as Cohen plays,
as they buy their coffee and forget why a voice becomes raspy,
forget why this or that artist died
and they think Joplin was a figment of someone's imagination
because these days you aren't an artist until someone remembers you
when you were down

and we pump ourselves with drugs, even the ones that come
with a prescription
and in philosophy class they tell me i should believe in god,
they do not understand the idea of the burden of proof being on them
and they pick apart the stencils on my back as if they're washable
and i have to use my own senses to differentiate between someone who is truly
ignorant and one who is merely being judgmental
and we like to believe those are one and the insane
but really they are two sides of the same coin
and this makes them different only when we flip
and i believe the use of "and" is to show how it all blends together,
the way i intercept each sentence with it
and the way my mind takes it apart the way you sit in the back of a class
and pretend to not sleep

we do not understand the importance of getting back to one
because we lack the patience to count
(to start over).

11/07/2011

Posted on 04/02/2012
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