Vacuosity

When our central desire is to become first
everyone and everything else become last
compassion is sucked into dark emptiness
and we breathe egos—vulnerable and alone

Our caustic entropy mines out space and time
swelling—from our abuses or abandonment
every hollowed-out hole or vacated void
moans deep inside—for light and friendship

Alliances—attain affiliation and acceptance
a country—always finds another close ally
a deep friend—meets a shallower friend
a child—seeks the ears of alternate parents
a lonely heart—finds sympathy elsewhere
a gift of nature—is paved into a viral waste
a faithful soul—discovers miracles—all alone
a refugee—relocates to an enemy’s shelter
a family—divides love into polarizing politics
a dream—drains into the dungeons of despair
a wonder—perishes in chasms of information
a poem—is pirated by artificial intelligence
a silence—succumbs to shrieking confusion
science—hides its miracles from authority
healthcare—abandons aches to insolvency
and empathy—becomes toxic sins of apathy

And when these pumping vacuums besiege us
all our bombastic and self-centered bloviations
all our raging sermons for devout conformity
all our hostile fires that smudged us in discord
will fade to cold gulfs of futility or conspiracy

Finally—the fissures we feverishly fashioned
because we were unwilling to look beyond us
become filled with fear—not facts or freedom
and every ensuing cost and lost collaboration
including the physical and emotional outlays
far exceed any ephemeral and ill-gotten wins

As we surrender patient love—for quick pride
all the black holes of our ignorance proliferate
and the last of our priceless fireflies—vanish