To write a happy poem don’t you

need to be happy? Liar if you’re not.

At this moment I’m neither happy

nor unhappy.

So…not much fuel in that tank.

No one wants a gloomy poem.

What’s left?  Mad?  Ditto for rants.

If no one is happy these days

and sad and mad are verboten,

we could pray and hear our echoes

bouncing between billiard balls

around our table of plenty.

But if hunger and thirst were feelings–

empathy alive in this land–

I’d eat this page in a minute

and spit out the truth in a can.

 

nan