Store Bought Artificial Tears

by Ed Coletti / July 23rd, 2017

We are outliving our eyes
We no longer can cry
In a wicked world politically
uncaring to weep is to act
in some small but at least human
way out or through hopelessness.
Today we watched a dead child
on a foreign beach far from his home
another on a Hungarian railroad track
his father pulling mother and child there
rather than return them to the untenable
and we discovering ourselves to be helpless
are but for this verse individually useless.

Ed Coletti is a poet, painter, fiction writer, and chess player who studied under Robert Creeley in San Francisco (1970-71). Ed has had work in The Brooklyn Rail, North American Review, Big Bridge, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Spillway, Lilliput Review, and ZYZZYVA. Internet presence includes his popular blog No Money In Poetry. Read other articles by Ed.

This article was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2017 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.