I treat hope

Like it's a transferable thing.

Have you none if your own?

Then I shall hope for you:

That is what I seem to think I can do

As I watch you become 

A speck at sea.

If I can be so cliche,

The clash of reality

Against the cliffside we call hope

Is full of substance

That swallows and drowns us.

Gulping for air,

We are hurled at hope by the sea.

We hold each others broken hands,

Close our salt burned eyes

And sing Kumbaya, My Lord

Come by here, 

My Lord

Come by here 

In case we forgot,

It is not an easy, breezy

Wind in your hair,

Guitar strings,

Sitting in a circle

On a woven rug

Sipping lemonade 

On a spring afternoon 

Song.

It is rending garments

And gnashing of teeth.

It is screaming in an empty room

To God or whatever is up there,

It is gasping for breath,

Tasting your own saliferous fluids

As hope leaks out like sludge,

Because your eyes 

Were covered with mud,

Because you were innocent, 

But now you see.

It is begging.

Someone's breaking, Lord.

Kumbaya.

For all of that,

The more resolutely ill the fate,

The more hope we hope,

And the louder the prayers we pray.

“Hope and prayers”:

Polite code

For, “I don't know what to do.”

When one's hope runs out,

Another hopes for them,

Hoping most of all

That hope will work

Like a magic key

That unlocks every door.

Hope is a gallery of mirrors,

Hoping, itself, that it is real,

So that it may perform its function,

Which is to hope,

And what does hope itself hope

When it knows that it is real?

That it is right,

That real is real,

That hope is the the one 

Who is the sea

Dashing it's body again the rocks;

That it IS reality.

And somehow, it is.

Hope is tape 

That we are wrapping

Around our hands

In anticipation of a fight.

It is the act of stomping

And seething, and rolling our necks.

After anger, and grief, 

And desperation,

We just decide to hope,

And run headfirst into battle.

We would pounce on a dragon

Sinking our flat teeth

Into its leather neck,

Because we hoped to hit an artery.

It is not hope

But desperate, spiteful,

Mouth-foaming determination

That we shred the dragon’s flesh,

But blood and hope and victory

Are all laded 

From salty bodies,

And taste of God,

So we hope, beg, and conquer

In an amalgamation 

Of sweat and supplication,

Or we die.

You, who are swept to sea

By the unforgiving tide,

Blood and victory to you.

May we all bleed, and bite,

And fight dragons

Until we are dignified

In our nescient hope.