December 28, 2021Poem

Is there a reason…

naturepoliticsmemorytimeidentitymortality

Is there a reason…

For wishing people harm

Laughing at misfortune

Sharing secrets to the world

Breaking someone’s trust

To feel powerful

Posting a live feed of an accident

Demanding it as a right

To stand your ground

When you are armed

To prove you are the bigger man

Because you can

Is there a reason…

To need a moment's grace

Feel a fresh wind on your face

Stand in someone else’s shoes

Know what it’s like to choose

Between an education

And a full stomach

When to be a bread-winner

Puts the dinner on the table

A family need will always

Trump the one

It stands to reason

Is there a reason…

Children have to cry

Unknown soldiers have to die

Immigration is a dirty word

When it was a truth

That built the world

A displaced refugee

Is another person’s pilgrim

We should remember

Where we all came from

It will help us know

How far we have left to go

Is there a reason…to suffer

I probably drank a little too much…hic.

Nothing is ever the way it seems

Observation is always coloured

By experience

Expectation bends light from the sun

In a twist of gravitation

Hidden worlds suddenly exposed

To interpretation

Which can differ as wildly

As a translation of Shakespeare

Turning tragedy into comedy

Nostalgia is rarely a two-way process

With equal parts given

To even up the score

Living in the past is more than likely

When awareness always lags behind

The action almost done

Before the process has begun

Nothing is ever real without agreement

Or happens without it is observed

Until the moment we open the box

All things are possible

An inconvenient truth

We all accept yes is yes

And no is no

Until we don’t

What does it mean to say

The sky is blue

The sea is green

Until the sun sets

When both sea and sky

Become a burning flame

What lies we tell

Are so much more

Than the notion of an ocean

Of neverending probability

Is red the same for you as it is for me

How do we know

Why do we care

When all we ever learn

By way of mutual regard

Is to pretend we all agree or disagree naturally.