Lunch with Chris Martin

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
-Coldplay (Chris Martin) from "Fix You"

Try
a weak word, though
more appealing than appalling now

I listen to a red-shirted stranger
yell from the park bench—
his platform for illegible rambling
I pass a minivan
smile at bored children
staring, thinking

one, two, buckle my shoe
three, four, what if the sky were purple or if you could make a mustache out of grass or if I was president of the whole
world, I’d make peace, make all lunchrooms have chocolate milk, make McDonald’s deliver to the house
like Domino’s

their mother behind the wheel
entertains her cell phone

I hear grave dissatisfaction
multiple lies
I know of cracked pots called families
and corporate thieves emptying the pockets of
their wealth's source

I watch the news talk about her drowning
swallowed by the sea
I look at body counts on nytimes.com
I see my lively friend lying nearly lifeless
unable to squelch the arsonist disease
engulfing her body
I imagine his eyes staring into
the barrel of that gun
holding breath
he knows
one shot
will capture

You are pushed from a womb
With all the weakness accompanying birth
I know you cannot
Fix
Your loved one or me or the world

But there’s real beauty in your trying