This is not my wheelhouse,
This is not my wheel
Dead children in the street
I tend to not write about
I don’t write about gentrification
Or police brutality,
Molestations and net neutrality
I don’t tend to write about
Abortions or death penalties
Or politicking over wrong and right
Its not that I don’t see,
I see.
I just don’t want to see.

I like to pretend that the happiness on TV
Is real.
I like to believe that there are not rapists in my backyard
And that school is safe, and no one is at risk of losing limbs
from running fucking races.
I tend to not fight, if only for the reason that I am a pacifist
But don’t stick your head in this lion’s mouth.
Don’t think that I am not blind to injustice
Like Guru said, there is no Justice, Just us.

I tend to not let myself rail on death,
And I hope I die before my friends do.
I try and block out losing friends to cancer and overdoses
Or my mother or father leaving this earth one day
I guess I am lucky that
I only have these ticks in my brain
I guess I am lucky that I can see peace thru pain
And have always worn a three on me
if only for peace and originality.

I see.
I watch the news, I see the bullet wounds
And sometimes I hear the late night wails of ambulances
Fires, and car accidents.
People robbed and shot, clerks killed for all the money in the register
I tend to not try and think about what is happening
To the children with third degree burns in homeless shelters
Orphans, and leukemia.
I wish I didn’t have to think about a man beating his wife to death
I tend to not think about how life ends as soon as it starts,
And pulses stop, and bills pile up
I like to not think about how one person’s debt follows his family after his death
and that a funeral costs the widow.

I tend to not think about these things, if only because they bring pain.
And when I write poetry, my goal is to let my pain
subside, like ocean tide
And sadness, and injustice
Drift away with rain
And in the moment
I only see what is in front of me,
And that is my hands typing keys,
Watching a sunset, through these Somerville windows
And wording rhymes is better then war crimes
And peoples dying in the streets

Oblivious I am, because I choose to be.

 

Jason Wright is the founder and Editor of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. He’s been doing this a while.