the true human condition

 

 

You treat people badly because you can,

because it gives you a thrill, because it

never occurred to you that you could

as easily treat people well, and end up

with a much better feeling about yourself.

 

 

 

Why are these moments memorable?

Because you are being seen

by another living being.

 

 

 

Help me to understand,

Humanity -- why you seem

compelled to horror,

loud blasts that destroy

in an instant

lives, long built projects, what

has been bled for, cried for,

denied untold suffering to attain.

I see youu claim to love with

passionate generosity, to

lionize kind sagacity, to yearn

for the beatific freedoms of

peace and charitable sanity.

You clearly want me to believe

in your greater good.

Yet you blatantly express malice,

greed, unrestricted indecencies --

Why?  Why are you killing me,

every "me" as if you are not

in control?

 

 

 

Not the distance of kindness

but of kind of intimacy.

Bringing in.  Breathing in

musky memory, close

cloistered reverie,

when we were us,

a coalition  of love, of life.

 

 

 

Why go back in time

when every choice was

what made sense in the moment?

Even knowing what I do today

I have to better way to choose,

no clearer vision to scry

from this river of life.

 

 

 

Perhaps we believe how

other people treat us is

about us, how we present

to the world, our shortcomings

coming home to roost,

traits we can't control,

expectations we can't meet.

Perhaps we don't understand

the true human condition,

encased in separate realities,

not reacting rationally as one

might suppose from subjective

objectivity.

 

 

 

When I was training to aid

people trying to escape domestic

abuse, we were told men abuse

women because of their

internalized and socially

reinforced belief that violence is

an acceptable, even expected,

means of self-expression.

 

 

 

Understand that I will never

NEVER, give you any money.

This is a firm commitment I

have made.  I could support you

in other ways, such as spreading

your messages.  That is if you give

me actual information rather than

this bait and switch of suggesting

there is actual information that you

email, when in fact it is only fundraising.

This kind of tactic only results in me

thinking you are not worth my

attention.

 

 

 

It's not a democracy because

we vote.  It is a democracy if we

do the work to rule ourselves.

 

 

 

I don't belong in the world

but neither, apparently, do

most of us

Somehow we're made to believe

those angry bigots get to be

normality.

 

 

 

7/2-18/23