Poetry: Hope(Less) by Joe Haward

Hope(Less)

 

Like the emaciated remains of a starving child, sifting through the detritus of society’s fabricated longings, we stagger, hunger unable to dissect

desire.

The illusion of dreams, asthmatic

aspirations

wheezing on the polluted air of enlightenment. A glimmer, seductively offering an inner thigh of possibility,

a pathway towards sybaritic nourishment. Good home, good grades. Good god, what happened. Decrepit lives graffitied, hidden behind the nostalgia of tomorrow’s world. Possibility’s potentiality perennially postponed. Naked emperors sit upon culture’s lepers, sucking marrow from dead bones.

                                        You can be anything you want to be.

Clawed fingers broken with yearning crawl through corporations’ filth, applauding power’s perversion. Mouths masticating crumbs from under the table beg to suckle the drool from ideologues’ chins, savouring its bitterness. Feasting upon the vapidity of fool’s paradise, there is never

enough

to go around.

Joe Haward is the author of two nonfiction books that explore the intersection between humanity, faith, film, and culture. As a horror writer, poet, freelance journalist, and book reviewer, his work has appeared, and is upcoming across multiple sites, in various anthologies and publications, including Byline Times, Cinnabar Moth Publishing, Ghost Orchid Press, Horror Oasis, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Outcast Press.