a little anti-antipathy

People say,
"What can
we do
ourselves?"
I say
put
your feet
in the
shoes
of
someone else.

One thing
I know
we
cannot do
Is pretend
it's happenin'
to them
And not
to you
Is pretend it's happenin' to them
and not
to you

The Other Side

I used to think I was alone
the only one who couldn't find "home":
that place the Masters say will be
the  inner sanctum where we're free.

Turns out there's millions of us here
who turn within to get more clear
and yet to know ourselves is not
the end and point of this life's plot

If we but keep our gaze within
we lose the chance to see our sin
the way our blindness like a sea
covers truths in them, not me.

The ship of fools is built within
when we refuse to listen in
to foreign lives, those not like ours
the gift is in our imaginitive powers

The times we quiet cacophony
to hear "the other", not just "we",
to stretch beyond experience
of our own lives, and jump the fence

To get that while we'll never know
exactly what has helped them grow
or made them closed or scared or tight
what gives them closed and fisted fights

Presuming "we" are "it" -- enough
is like a man upon a bluff
who sees the ocean far below
believes it's he who makes it flow

Civil disobedience

Fear fuels
Anger over-drive
Darkened Yule
bodies in streets lie
A thin veil
Silence won't abide
Following the grail
Communities will rise

Winter Chalice

buried hearts unearthed

broken open by grief's fire

love's serrated witness

Corinthian's Contusions

Blind frightened power
Pursuing imagined threats
dim-lit mirrors fail

We Have Met The Enemy

The closing heart

bereft at injustice

demanding witness

requires continued 

compassionate connections

or it so easily forgets

how to open, 

can't release constricted valves

painfully staunches the flow 

of our own life-blood 

strangles 

us

until

we

can't breathe

#witness

Incensed.
Can't breathe.
My own denial
brings me to my knees.

Tears of rage.
Tears of grief.
They think they walk on water?
Is that what they believe?