God Is in the Numbers

I feel this pull to make from clay what I can’t

To mangle the unanswerable in the meat of my hands

To offer as digestible all the shrapnel and sand

Like I’m qualified to even be what I am

I feel this pull to fill up negative space

To populate the blackness with platitudes & cliches

“it’s all so complicated; your heart, it just breaks”

Saying nothing like it’s something to say

My friend says, “god is in the numbers

There’s mercy in math

It’s reality-adherent”

I’m working with that

When I get buried in opinion

Caught in narrative frames

To simplify the process

Find my answer that way

It clarifies & starts to take shape

For instance: 51 is greater than 1

And the gap will only widen every day this drags on

And starvation’s still a war crime no matter who you come from

And journalists and children didn’t earn being bombed

And I feel this pull to say there’s only one tribe

Clusters on a seesaw

And for the disenfranchised

You identify imbalance

And throw your weight on their side

What else is there, in the cold, even light

Of every day I’m always dreading?

I would much sooner hide

Surround myself with blinders

Live my comfortable life

Until some Irish understanding

In my cellular soul

Sees the brutal subjugation

And it won’t let me go

I’m not an expert

But I know what I know