Inquiries for my Fellow Men

Inquiries for my Fellow Men

I.

Why do we break the bodies
of those we claim to love,
leave them bleeding on the floor,
gasping for breath,
holding back tears,
ashamed,
as if it were their fault
and can’t bear to look up at us,
their aggressor, their would-be lover,
through tear-smeared makeup
and swollen bruises?

II.

Why should they be made to
feel as if they must ask for
forgiveness from God?
We are the ones who need
forgiveness, who should be
begging prostrate on the stairs
before the throne—or, rather,
in front of the gates,
which will never open for us.
We are the ones who deserve
no forgiveness, no pity,
and should wither away alone
in solitude, with no eyes
upon us, not even God’s.

III.

Some mistakes are
beyond human mercy.
Is this all you think
praying is for?

IV.

Gandhi once remarked that
an eye for an eye makes the
whole world blind, but
if we’re already blind—which,
surely, we are—then what
good do our eyes serve us?
If we see the stains of blood
and heaps of salt from
evaporated tears that our
brothers and fathers have
drained from our
mothers and daughters,
and do nothing to stop
this ageless cycle, then
why not gouge out our
eyes, so at the very least
we know the meaning of
undue pain and suffering?

V.

The Chinese sage Laozi believed that
“the hard and brittle will surely fall,
and the soft and supple will overcome.”
A twenty-seven century old wisdom
still waiting patiently to bear fruit:
how many more generations must pass,
how many more women must look
into the eyes of their son
and see their rapist staring back,
before we stop leaning on false hopes
and ancient doctrines, realizing that the
change we desire must come from within?

VI.

A father is a mold
A son is the clay
Elastic in March
Dry and brittle by May.

A mother is a cloud
A daughter is the rain
Falling down to earth, cold,
But destined to rise again.