Futility is an exercise in patience

A poem about living in the "bad" part of town.

Futility
is an exercise in patience

out here, in the ‘hood,
as they used to call it�"
now it’s just called “nowhere”
now that the glamour has left
and the T.V. cameras packed up too
once there was nothing to see
nowhere to be

out here, in nowhere,
some call it no-man’s-land�"
the empty space between dreams
and reality, or as we like to call it,
the day we got beat up
‘cus someone thought it’d be funny to watch
our fingerbones breaking, one by one

out here, in our dreams,
(we call them crazy)�"
there are tall trees everywhere
and litte kids with plastic shovels
digging holes in the playground,
but our dreams go like cigarette smoke
and they vanish like silent souls

futility
is an exercise in patience

we know all of that word
it shudders in our every bone
it smoulders in our every breath�"
futility;
the absence of hope

but so too do we know “patience”
yes, we know how to wait
for promises made, buses late, money withheld�"
jobs denied, mothers expecting, fathers absent, love delayed;
for all these, we wait                   and wait

we have gnawed these words to bare bones
lived in them threadbare for years
so how is it that, still, after all these barren years,�"
when the “absence of” cleaves to the “waiting for”;
they still give birth to�"“Hope?”

futility 
is an exercise in patience

no one knows this better
than we who live out here
in the middle of nowhere

we with our big, silly dreams�"
we’ll settle for a playground
or just a happy little kid

because we know how to read between the lines�"
search the empty spaces between dreams and reality,
even when there is nothing worth seeing

We’ll find something worth waiting for.

Author's Note

What can I do to make this poem more powerful?

Reviews

[Holly Mason]

you may get answers you may not...to me this is powerful I changed my whole life over crime and the atmosphere of city
this is a up to date topic a new way of saying things are not good people wake up
thank you for sharing