I have been reading a lot of blogs lately. And this poem is a response to a great many of them.
For Stephen Stills
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the streets
Singing songs, and a-carrying signs
Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"*
We have become so polarized. The lines
are drawn so black and thick between each side,
the pickets filled with stark and ugly words
that only emphasize a hate that grows
when one's own thoughts have turned to stone
fit just for use as weapons behind walls,
where in a soldier's stance we fear what change
would come if doubt encroached upon our minds.
Our single drops of rain gather for storms
that we would have directed at our foes;
yet as the skies turn somber and morose,
we each lament, and blame the restless clouds.
Is this the force that would improve the world,
with great lambasting vitriol and spite?
Have we forgotten that the ends become
perverted by such cold and heartless means?
With scorn emblazoned on our barbed wire hearts,
we seek to prove our way the truth and light;
but bury any hope for growth or peace
and for compassion dig a shallow grave.
04 FEB 2005
* from For What It's Worth, by Stephen Stills and recorded by Buffalo Springfield during the Vietnam War
