HOPE

Is there a sadder word in all the world? Tall sail of hope.
Or one more needfully optimistic, more full of hope?

A ginormous blue diamond. A baby girl. A calm day
in a tropical depression. All fit the bill of hope.

Acid stomach of impure survival, corroding. Life’s
search for the hungry bakery, scrounging the meal of hope.

Falling from the knotted web of past and present into
a deserted future, asking for the angel of hope.

Is that too much to ask? ’Tween milky tit and maggoty
dirt, to have a place at the warm empty table of hope?

If gambler’s hell is never losing, a more grisly hell
is life clearcut of wish, where you can’t even tell of hope.

In the echoey morphing jail of genes, geography,
food and poop, spit, taste and work, we live for the all of hope.