We Say We Want Peace

We say we want peace
A simpler world
Filled with
Community gardens
Sunshine
Kindness

Yet we live like savages

We stomp on our neighbor’s gardens
We block the sunshine
We are so incredibly
Un-kind

We take
More than
We need

We take
What we
Could leave
 
We take
Each other’s
Parking spaces

We say that we want peace
And then go right on living
In ways that prove
We don’t 

Respect It

When we can’t truly fathom
What it has been like
To live through
What someone else
Has survived
 
In that case

Could we just try
To respect it

Trust that if someone says

That was hard
Nearly killed me
And changed me forever
That it did

Can we accept
That sometimes
Words to explain
The unexplainable
Simply do not
Exist

But the person
In front of us

Does exist

And deserves
The story

Painful as it may be

To be acknowledged

I Remember

Every time I hear
About someone written off
As crazy
 
I remember
When someone I love
Was written off
As the same

Every time I hear
If that happens again
I’m going to kill myself
Said only as a joke
 
I remember
That someone important to me
Really almost killed himself
And someday still might
 
Every time I am reminded
That even now
People would rather me not talk
About what I have survived
 
I remember
The unbearable isolation
Of those difficult years
 
And I am humbled
 
Because I also remember
Times gone by

When I would joke
About someone needing their meds
If their behavior was different

And how funny
That was to me then
Before I loved someone
Whose life meds
Have saved

The difference is clear
Before I didn’t know

And now
I remember

Compassion

Where is our
Collective compassion

For animals

For each other

For journeys
We are spared
But see others
Being asked
To walk
 
Where is the knowing
That we are one

That your pain
Is my pain

That you
Are just me
With different shoes

We have forgotten
What we share

Lost our ability
To see ourselves
In each other
 
And with every
Word of hatred
Hurled outward
To wound another
 
We wound ourselves
Just as deeply
 
And suffer
All the more