/GOD Mode

Invincibility.

Nobody can hurt me.

The lines on my face trace

experience,

they won’t tell you what roads

lead back home.

And that’s the same

for every poor m**********r

walking the streets of Richmond

when the cold sets in.

Invincible eyes

flaring against

the night

on park benches,

in diners

around this time

every day.

 

You can’t kill them,

they don’t die

until you turn around

in your Minicoops

feeling nothing

for the man with the cardboard sign

you read three times

before the light turns green.

 

Invisible

lives

that don’t compile

simply.

In the waiting room

with a man and his son

staring at the wall

mounted television,

until the woman

calls my name. 

Reviews

[Ethan]

Is God mode the only option in a world that evinces "compassion fatigue"? There is a man with a cardboard sign at each light. What is more crushing, to realize you can do nothing, or to do something and have it mean nothing? You poem is well crafted, evocative and economical. I might only wish for a small stanza of inner voice that considers the futility/armor/compassion-humanity trilemma.

[Matt]

Very good idea for a poem i really like you have done here!

[emmajoy]

'You can’t kill them,.. ... ' Oh yes you can, with indifference.

As soon as I read this first time, I thought of the movie, I, Daniel Blake, which touched me deeper than i thought possible.

In many ways this points the way to desperation, to the obvious so often veiled to passers--by too busy to see, to look, to bother. Believe me however, there are people who care, who not only weep but get up onto their feet at night, at Christmas and do what they can.

That final stanza, that final line, says more than the entire poem. It displays a human being with feeilings expressed with caution.

Your write with tension most of the time.. let rip however.. show absolute and sincere anger!

[Leroy Sinclair]

When I saw the word Richmond I thought it was Richard and I got all fired up cause me and my brothers from Norway House are comin' down on a warpath for this guy, Mr Richard Burnish ,for impersonating me and not sending me my two boxes of beer and bottle of whisky like we agreed, I hurt my back when I fell off my roof fixin' my satellite dish so the warpath out of Norway House is on hold for me, Leroy Sinclair.

[KTizzle]

I found these lines a little vague to me, "You can’t kill them,/ they don’t die" but that may be because I'm not sure who you are referring to by "them." Was it the eyes that never die or the people unseen? If it's referring to the eyes, then those lines seem a bit redundant because you've beautifully described invincibility in the first stanza.

By the way, I really do love the irony of the first stanza and how it portrays the limits to invincibility. Invincibility can be disconnecting from humanity. I loved the shift in the final stanza to "invisible lives."

I love how this can be taken two different ways. It can be a critique against god or it represents how people buff themselves up only to be reminded of their humanity by tragedy.

Interesting write.

Thanks for posting! Have a great day!

[Michael X]

Wow, no doubt I like this poem, touches upon real issues of our society with raw truths that speak to the heart, passionate and well defined!