If I look closer

Now I squint through squeezed lids

i admit
i've been letting myself down
it's been hard to do my job
in integrity
scraping the world 
and serving it up:
i've been trying
to feel nothing at all 
because

if i look closer
i will be unable to know 
what i am seeing,
if it is real,
how it could be true
that my brother mocks me,
that intelligent folks
have descended, 
that the worst of it
has only begun.
what we worry is a chasm 
is yet only 
the slender reveal.

the monster 
under the bed
in the closet
stalking our dreams
once relegated to shadows
now invited in.
once the night agreed
to hold my baseless worries. 
how many times 
i woke to morning's wonder 
casting off 
the silliness, the spinning 
tossing away  
the empty hours--

now i squint through
squeezed lids to see 
how darkness refuses to relent
to day,
to truth,
to light rising over the horizon,
to the warm,
mother love which 
has always banished fear,
delivered grace.
cruelty has arrived
here now
to take its place
at the head of the table
and to laugh among
the beatings.

this is just another
stupid mordor
and no dear elves
to save us