Saving the World

I realized around October 22nd that
it wasn’t worth my time anymore,
that stupid project I had set out to complete
the spring before.
When it began I figured that it would be easy
something simple that I could just finish
in a few days and then never have to
worry about it again.

I was naïve back then,
oh my gosh,
to think that I could save the world
in a few simple steps.
The list is still taped to the back of my door,
all hopeful and happy and exact,
with notes in the margins that told me
exactly
how I was going to go about saving
a billion and one people from
themselves.

I don’t wanna be a cynic,
but seriously,
how could I even figure that anyone would
want to listen to a freckle faced
thirteen year old from Connecticut?
My negative outlook on life is now influenced
by the outlooks of every single person around me,
and they’ll never know because
they all think that
they’re so
fantastically
fantastic.

Whenever I picture the earth,
spinning around in the atmosphere like a top
or dreidel
or whatever
I imagine two long streams of tears
like the Gulf Stream only so much bigger
and bluer
trailing down in between countries and
nuclear war zones.

Gosh, I can’t help but to be cynical
about this big blue spinning thing
that we all happen to inhabit,
that we all happen to destroy
on a daily basis,
when everything is slowly crumbling
to bits and pieces of rubble and
and lost causes.

Saving the world seemed like such a good idea
until I realized that I lacked kryptonite
and spidey senses
like all my favorite super-heroes.
Yeah, what a great idea it was
back then.