We Auction Our Hopes

We Auction Our Hopes

(“’Tell David that all I want for the bride price is 100 Philistine foreskins! Vengeance on my enemies is all I really want.’ But what Saul had in mind was that David would be killed in the fight.” 1 Samuel 18:25)

I wondered why the universe wouldn’t be placed like
a hologram before us sitting on the kitchen table.
Why couldn’t we put our hands upon the orb, examine
it with our skin on?
Why not orbit its perimeter, experiment with its trajectory,
change the refraction of light and realign the spectrum?

Isn’t that what kings and presidents, ceos and John Does
try to do every day?

We would make the rain fall on flooded plains if we could,
just to show the pains we’ve taken to rise to the top of the mountain
billions of years in the making.

I don’t have to hurt myself to see if I still feel pain,
that’s already been done for me. I could meditate all day in
the desert or
the forest
and be done in a moment to find the spike in my head that
now slices my heart.

I wondered why we can’t just be in the world
and not of it.
Why we can’t refrain from turning the dials and just
learn to love it the way the Master does. The Lover does.
The Mother does. The wild goose and the peaceful dove does.

I wondered what happens when the pain beneath our skin begins
to be the atmosphere we walk in, the ocean we swim in,
the dirt we dig in and the noise that never leaves us a moment
of silence.

100 foreskins, 200 foreskins; we auction our hopes and double
the bribes,
all because raggedy rulers decree a bride-price for
the guarantee of our freedom.