war and peace

 Why is there no right to be left alone,

and no right to be heard?

Maybe it's as simple as having 

an artist's soul

None of it is easy

that's what is

What do you do with your life?

What do you want to do?

How reconcile -- to do what is 

meaningful to you

within the boundaries given?

We seem to have lost respect for

well directed hard work and meaningfully

good intentions, instead intent on

insulting with the crowd.

War and Peace

Rape, angry savagery

these have been weapons of war

since war began

since we began

Send out young men with everything

to prove

in a world where masculinity

means obdurate strength against all 

comers, no mercy, no soft sensibilities.

Mere politics won't change this.

Leaders are caught up in their social

norms.  Only cultural shift can move human

behavior to a place of greater sanity,

those better lives we claim so deeply to

desire.

Hate is too potent, to important an emotion

to harbor wholesale.

Hate ought be intimate, one to one,

based on true harm.

We, each and all, need to discover,

to invent, to learn, to devise our ways

to become, each and all, imbued with

kindness, compassion, the enlightened

self-interest of win/win/win.

This is as possible as any goal mankind

might plan, encourage, carry through.

That each and every me and you

has our part in, our literal skin in,

shareholders all.

Or would you rather continue to fall,

to fail to thrive?