Issue

At night
When the elusive vail of sleep is fluttering in and out of my vision
I think about the earth
And I worry.
I imagine polar bears and penguins
Green Sea Turtles and Asian Elephants
Huddled together 
Losing the homes they love.
A dam breaks loose 
At the back of my head
And silent movies
Screaming in my ears
Come pouring out
I see thousands of people 
Crowds expanding across streets
Cities
Countries
Across the world
Greta Thunberg is speaking to me
Small animals are looking at me with sad eyes
Those dark pools
I can’t ignore
And I pull
My covers tighter
And that veil
Slips into my mind 
And absorbs
These worries
For now.

For now,
Now is the time 
To trail your hands through the streets
And guide those growing crowds!
Some inner voice in my mind tells me.
But the one in my chest is beating out a different rhythm
It tells me to join the crowds
And throw my body into the pulsing beat of change as a whole
Change as a demand
Change as a movement.

The two rhythms clash and swirl together
An intricate salsa
Rival dance mobs
Stamping tap shoes and sneakers 
In my forehead (it has good acoustics,
apparently)

In the small compartments of the day
Overhead compartments on a plane
My head is a projection screen
For dancing shadows in black and white
For guns
And locks
And gavels
And lists
And cruel things
My eyes are hollow
Like black holes
The world is sucked in
Sometimes returned to starlight
Some things to dust

Sometimes I
Jump
Into the whole
In the middle
Of my head
I don’t come out 
For a while
The ladder is hard to find
It’s not permanent
Too old
The metal twists under my feet 
I have to claw my way into 
Oblivion

You ask what issue matters to me
I will turn this question around and around in a washing 
Machine
Eventually I will take it out
Starched and nicely pressed
I’ll give it back
With a tidy answer wrapped in cellophane
But all the stains
All the lint
All the life
The real problems 
Erased
So I guess
The problem
That matters most to me
Is 
Me.