the Sound is there, but is it Heard?

Yesterday: When I was a child, I didn’t know. I never thought about it much - the distance a man is from goodness when he turns against a neighbor - which valve in his heart closes when he meets in a room with generals discussing casualties; how he makes up a morality that supports the creation of a mass distribution of lies - you know the kind that will make mothers shriek with grief because a family member has disappeared.

Growing up a few miles from where farmers stacked hay and milked cows, I didn’t know that there were ghost men, stone men, vacant men, traveling in cars, or by ships and planes - on their way silent like assassins. (Doing the “everyday”, the “normal ” saying, “good work” to each other - speaking again, and saying - “I do what I do - this dirty job, so that citizens can sleep safely at night”.) But are we safe? ummm…

This isn’t a poem is it? It does not look like a poem does it? I have been writing poems for years and I promise you this is not a poem. Look through the pixels on this screen, squint your eyes until your pupils are tiny enough to see me, I am a make believe man typing; trying with borrowed words to make a difference. I am a human wanting meaningful muscles.

I wish I was a genie, or knew where a genie lived - do you know which door on what street I should knock to find one. I prayed and still my father beat me. I cried and my mother did not hear me. I read the books Christians and Muslims and Buddhist’s said I should read, but I couldn’t get past the observations that listening was either something we refused to do, or would never do; that listening was a vital part of a co-existing peace process.

You. Your voice. The wind waiting in your mouth - what to do with the sound of your yearning, your love poem, your God prayer, in a world deaf and inured to the sound of suffering.