The Voices in Your Head

by Sean Murphy 
 
It didn’t used to be this way,
he sighs, static and unshaven.
 
It didn’t used to be like this,
she thinks. Don’t enable them,
her father used to say.
 
(But where is his father, and
what would I say if my son
stood before me, neither policeman
nor president, but the deferred dream
of better intentions?)
 
Hey brother, can you spare a life?
 
I don’t have any to spare, but
I’ll dig deeper and give ‘til
it hurts you more or less
than it hurts me.
 
It’s always been thus,
God might explain, but
He’s busy with a billion other
street corners, alleys, slums and
the newer tent cities He can
scarcely keep track of.
 
The earth itself is silent.
but what would it say?
All its stages a world
With so many passion plays.
 
So many dispirited shapes,
sleeping under overpasses,
bridges with graffiti singing
songs of pain and witness.
 
Huddled masses, created in their own
image, forever and ever.
World without end
Amen.