For Hope

By Jamie York

A man shot himself at the Shell station yesterday,
trading his blood for oil,
for a helicopter ride to the hospital,
for hope.
“Were there any warning signs?” a reporter asked,
and I remembered a Vietnam veteran
sleeping on a steam grate in front of the FBI building,
too tired to pull the trigger.
Some do and some don’t,
yet gas prices and hopelessness are rising daily.
“The warning signs are everywhere,” a witness answered.
“Why don’t you report on the world as it REALLY is?”
And all I could hope for was that someone would miss him.