I Punched the World in the Face Today

A Poem

I punched the world in the face today, bloodied its nose, and cracked a tooth and said — don’t ever disrespect me like that again.

Then I woke up inside my own dream with my pillow dented and my wife up on one elbow staring at me in the twilight, shaking her head.

Sorry I said, as she squeezed my arm. I sat up and tried to remember what the fight was all about. Why I had gotten so angry and felt the need to punch a pillow, a face, an opponent I couldn’t see, but knew was standing in my shadow — chuckling.

The world is too big for one person to deal with. Too many faces and attitudes and endless ways to lash out and inflict pain and dodge punishment, while wrecking weddings, and breaking skateboards and laughing at all the wrong moments.

“The World” is a mean place. A wicked little shit who trips old ladies and dashes hopes and writes nasty little pictures on bathroom stall walls, while littering the freeways and telling lies, all the while pretending to be gracious and filled with God.

If I could punch the world, I mean really punch it and knock it back on its heels and gets its attention I’d tell it to fucking snap out of it, and I would do it in a heartbeat. I would take my best shot. I would not hold back. I would let all my hurt and all my tears and all my images of others run down into my fist and I would pound sense, and reason and innocence back into its ugly mug.

I would strike it again and again and tell it enough! Tell it to fucking stop messing with us. Tell it to look us all in the eye and see what it was doing. I would reach on either side of its face and make it look right at me and see that I was serious.

I laid my head back on the pillow. Focused on my wife’s breathing and her warmth and her love and I cried. I made my pillow wet with tears of pain and allowed myself to dream again. To fall into that place where I was big enough and strong enough to punch the world in the face.

There are moments in life, when the world seems detached from humanity. Even though we’re connected to it, as it whirls around the cosmos, it feels like a place we are heading to, but have never actually been there. It operates on a set of rules supposedly made by us and yet we struggle to understand what is being done in our name. I had one of those moments over the weekend. Like the tether hooked to my belt was too frayed to hold and I began drifting away. That’s when this poem came to me. It may not be pleasant and I accept that. It may not be totally hopeful — but there’s hope running through it for sure. If I could “punch the world” and knock some sense into it — like a real superhero — I would do it in a New York minute. Until that time — I’ll continue writing.

Karen Madej J.D. Harms Dr Mehmet Yildiz Paul Myers MBA George J. Ziogas Amy Marley Harley King James Knight Salvatore Cagliari Caroline de Braganza Michele Thill Trista Ainsworth Eli Snow ScienceDuuude Kira Dawn Britni Pepper Desiree Driesenaar Liam Ireland Gurpreet Dhariwal R Tsambounieri Talarantas Paroma Sen Terry L. Cooper janny’s heart Alison Tennent Rebecca Romanelli