Everyone has the key
I am locked
Everyone's path is free
Mine is blocked.
I am in my prison
Of self punishing thought
With my logic, my reason
I remain in the rut and rot.
The fear of the other
The terror of everyone
That's the real monster
To defeat, to have won.
In a day
and age
where time and space
have gone beyond grace
where peaceful night,
refreshing dawn
are but oxymoron
I make an oath with you
beside me
despite the difference
in what we hear and see
we’ll be for each other
here and there, everywhere.
I will not be like you,
You won’t
be like me,
Yet we
can live together
Be fond of one another
In healing harmony.
We may be
lovers true,
Or
neighbors passing by,
Or family
at the table
Beneath
the same wide sky.
Our
habits and our tastes,
Our
faiths, our ways of speech,
The roads
on which we wander
May lie
far out of reach.
Yet still
we make this promise,
However
we may part:
We will
not wound each other,
Nor break
another’s heart.
We may
debate and differ,
Our
thoughts may disagree,
But words
will not be weapons
Across
this human sea.
We’ll
keep the strength within us,
The
courage to stay wise,
When
anger fills the streets
And
madness floods the skies.
If all
the world grows smaller,
If reason
fades away,
We will
not walk like fools—
We’ll
choose a kinder way.
We point
carefully
at the other man.
The neighbour.
The stranger.
The faceless crowd.
The house is called Earth.
Invisible hands
have coloured the walls tonight
red in the lamplight.
Someone is singing
in the square:
Drums.
Sirens.
Boots in procession
Beat in the dark,
Nightmare.
A thin cry travels
under the music—
a child somewhere
without a voice.
They have written a word
on the wall
broken by noise.
Liberty.
The paint has not yet dried.
Morning enters quietly
through shattered glass.
And the wind asks
no one in particular—
What was the point.
It looks like that
Moon in the water
images in a paper
reflected face shattered
in a mirror;
the face intact, unaffected.
The world gets into
a fight, or it runs away
from the fray.
The sun is ever bright,
never in darkness.
No range of foolishness
anger, fear, happiness
despair, a strange colour
a crown that denies
my crown,
masks me as a clown.
Despite the bombings,
the rambling of the rumblings,
the ruckus
peace and war, circles
of a circus.
Take off the hat
even if it looks like that.
an inane sinner
sits in sallow silence,
sheltered by self-spun
shadows,
may or may not
sanctify as a saint
softly, a sinister stimulus
seeps in innocence
through the seams
of the sealed soul —
a subtle summons,
serpentine and slow
but sense has sunk;
sanity stands shattered
he salutes the sickness,
smiling at its sting,
and swallows the signal
as though it were salvation
Heaps of words,
destruction
there’s no land on earth
which hasn’t been hurt
by the cruelty of
the tongue
dirt, dust, all around the grey air,
syllables fall like ash,
soft, persistent, impossible
to sweep away
a phrase can bruise a city,
a whisper can start a fire
that history pretends
was accidental
we sharpen vowels into weapons,
polish consonants until they gleam,
then act surprised
when blood follows the rules
mountains remember what
we said to them,
rivers carry insults downstream,
teaching the sea new ways
to pollute the mainland of civilization
words build homes, yes,
they also dig graves
with terrifying inimical patience
still we speak—
piling sound upon sound,
heaps of wounds,
hoping one day
they will mean a healing repair
