Emptiness

When I finally merge with opulence
Drinking expensive wines
Buying her expensive gifts
Dispensing thirty pieces of silver
To bait young pointed breasts,
Will I forget about us?

This was supposed to be a poem about us,
With our outstretched hands, begging
With our sunken eyes, despairing
With our rumbling stomachs, hungering.

Instead, it’s an empty poem
A poem about our emptiness
The lie that is the reality we live.

As I work hard, I dream harder
Of driving my wife around
Taking my girlfriends to Hiltons
And taking my children to academies

When that day comes
Will I forget about us?
Of our wives under burdens of stale merchandise
Trekking to markets full of emptiness,
Our children plunging into sewages for a swim
Of how many we are, how few they want to remain
Of the emptiness that separates them from us.

So the poem remains unfinished
Not knowing whom to Ballard about,
The me I want to become
Driving as others starve,
The me I am
Starving as others drive,
The me I should be
Looking down if am up above.

And instead of singing a poem about us
My heart belts out in sadness
Screaming a cacophony of emptiness.

©2008 Otiato Opali