Because Hope

One God stopped a lot of arguing.

Then, science did the rest to shut us up.

Everything now is so prophesized or proven

that Martians can't tell us one from another.

Chimps look at us and say, "I can do that."

A planet destroyed by the fruit of its biosphere,

as humans wreck it all in blunder and bliss.

Gentle, now. Come my way, and confess.

How a world erodes to less and less.

Let me call you unafraid, and ask

you to take measure of what's left.

Size up the void we made.

So total and complete our theft,

we became baron and baroness

of holes...empires of emptiness.

No one believes in apocalypse,

of course, until it's too late.

Yet, we can count the extinctions.

We watch death as if it was wind

or rain or snow, and make plans.

We hear the voices anyway, wrong

that they exist, without matter or

any mass to them that we can tell.

The universe is a talking thing.

Motionless, we remain, despite all

the instruction day by day, simple

because we have, you know, people

in our lives, relationships, complex

as any puzzle toy, and you know, too,

there's good and bad, and parents

who never once said to go run off

at the invisble sound of direction

cooked down so perfectly for you.

And our diet of dollar bills keeps us

stuffed and busy, hungry and thin.

Ah, know this highway is a roving tongue

in a night that will maybe chew you down,

though chance allows new worlds to get born.

You're captain of the borderline, in this life

fenced off from dreams. Traitor to it all,

command the troops, "Tear down this wall.

We owe the infinite our fearful best."

Why every sunset is bathed in longing.

The universe speaks in impossible distance

because hope.