{"id":729,"date":"2011-09-25T05:29:40","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T05:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue10\/?page_id=729"},"modified":"2019-04-02T13:01:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T13:01:28","slug":"bruce-narbaitz","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/spoken-word\/bruce-narbaitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Narbaitz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hope<\/strong><\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the time it took to write this poem the following things occurred:<\/p>\n

A mother cried for her son whose been missing since October,<\/p>\n

An alcoholic relapsed after five years of being sober<\/p>\n

A teen boy jumped down sixty feet to hit the concrete street,<\/p>\n

A woman went hungry for a week so that her kids could eat<\/p>\n

A man drowned attempting to save a sinking stranger\u2019s life<\/p>\n

A lonely old man finally fell asleep and joined his wife<\/p>\n

A young lady caught malaria working for an NGO in Nigeria<\/p>\n

Many people died fighting for political justice in Syria<\/p>\n

A young boy donated his birthday money to charity<\/p>\n

A teenage girl realized some things are more important than popularity<\/p>\n

A baby sparked a chain reaction of explosive laughter<\/p>\n

A wonderful couple just started their happily ever after<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You see, the world isn\u2019t all that bad.<\/p>\n

There are sparkles amidst the darkness;<\/p>\n

Diamonds deep down underground in the dark, dank dirt,<\/p>\n

Gems and gold that glimmer in the cold, hard earth,<\/p>\n

Specks of light lighting up existence,<\/p>\n

Like the twinkle twinkle of little stars<\/p>\n

Or the human stars that inspire us to shoot for their cosmological counterparts.<\/p>\n

Those shining dots that cross the \u201cT\u201d and dot the \u201cI\u201d in the word resistance<\/p>\n

Resisting the darkness\u2019 consensus, undermining the shade\u2019s supremacy.<\/p>\n

And if darkness doesn\u2019t even dominate at night,<\/p>\n

Imagine the joy of seeing the sun\u2019s first light.<\/p>\n

Cause every night sky is followed by a bright sky,<\/p>\n

As the dawn destroys the dictatorship of darkness.<\/p>\n

Hold on to the hope that someday the sun will shine.<\/p>\n

As the horizon becomes the fight\u2019s front line<\/p>\n

As the sun rises above, hatred is being pushed back by love<\/p>\n

Violence is being conquered by the white dove of peace<\/p>\n

You see, in the end, evil doesn\u2019t stand a chance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not na\u00efve,<\/p>\n

I know our world is inhabited by hurt and pain,<\/p>\n

But hurt and pain don\u2019t hold the reins,<\/p>\n

Evil won\u2019t win this game of Life.<\/p>\n

Struggle and Strife might struggle and strive<\/p>\n

But they will never overcome a person fully alive.<\/p>\n

Program hope into your hard drive,<\/p>\n

So you know how to survive even if life takes a nose dive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At times the dark night might tempt us to despair<\/p>\n

But the light of hope helps us carry on,<\/p>\n

So bring it with you, like your carry-on luggage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes it seems like the darkness will last forever,<\/p>\n

Like the only light is sight is ten thousand miles away,<\/p>\n

But light can travel that far in less than a second.<\/p>\n

Sometimes healing can happen in a heartbeat,<\/p>\n

A broken heart made whole in a hurry.<\/p>\n

Just have hope, and don\u2019t worry<\/p>\n

Cause no matter how dark your surroundings,<\/p>\n

Light might be just around the corner.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it seems like Evil has stacked the deck,<\/p>\n

That no matter how fast you run, it\u2019s still breathing down your neck<\/p>\n

You see, Evil is a natural sprinter<\/p>\n

Suddenly it springs into action, surprising you with its speed,<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t surrender; cause Evil is not a long distance runner.<\/p>\n

Darkness has no stamina so don\u2019t stop running.<\/p>\n

Cause soon enough it will get too tired to keep up,<\/p>\n

And if you endure, eventually you will leave evil in the dust,<\/p>\n

Just keep running, cause someday soon the sunrise will send the darkness away<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t give up: Persevere until you see the light of day<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And in the words of the wise Samwise Gamgee,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.<\/p>\n

A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.\u201d
\n