Hope: A Film Noir

Hope unfortunately
gets in the way of Truth
a lot of the time, he smirks.  

If he still smoked
he’d take a long drag now then
side-mouth the exhale, squinting

like Bogart or how he thinks
Bogey would squint. Too young
to have seen it, only having seen

generations-past watering down
that squint, now it’s
part of the language

of failed romantics everywhere
and he’s fluent in that. 
Somebody, get that man 

the right hat. Hope 
is a mistake a lot of the time.
It only gets used

for the wrong stuff. You gotta
go on faith for the important 
things. Hope is a tool

to make it happen but don’t
expect much from it.
We’re doomed. He says that last thing

in the voice of a cartoon donkey
he never saw. We’re Doomed. Hope says
he’s a fool, a kid, a poser; says 

he’ll outgrow this one day, have a kid
of his own, pass the past down
to that one. But you can’t rely

on Hope for everything.  
Maybe this one
means it, maybe every one of these kids

means it.  Maybe we’re doomed
after all. Maybe Hope was just the stuff
Dreams were made of.