All the Dreams (2023)

All the dreams I had for other women

Are coming true for me, today:

Seated neatly against a white background,

Like a word printed for the first time

I experience Nothingness

and its peace, like the stale public air

in the back of a Crown Victoria,

or behind a locked aluminum door.

From snitched pulpit watching

Us all spin to self-wished

Future emblazoned

with complacent tongues of fire,

I wonder with anxious burden

What I have, in ignorance,

Pilfered in the high-viz night,

and the things which I 

Cannot give back,

as It All is now a burnt emblem 

of necessary shame.

It is an ongoing travesty—