In the cold night
That darkest time
When dawns forgotten
My heart burns
With fear and pain
My home aflame
To an unaltarable offering
And fiery furnish
Of wanton change
Of hammering out or deal
For scanty respite
From that
I hate
Combusting
Up the world
With care less balms
And succors for bid
Sow overdo
And with such gall
I light
All things tinder
Overlooking the infernal warming
Of making a fuel of my self
In whatever eye wood do
Only just
In the mean time
Slamming on
The day brakes
I find myself
In the mourning
Executing catharsis
I come to
Grasping for breath
Only fearing what thou wilt due
I under stand
My shudders unbolted
Udderly apprehended
As in canned essence
Set free
Revealing my son ship
Brethren to awe
And cistern of tears
Still, don’t pine for me
For what
I have got
My ash kicked
By whatever might
Remain
As I urn my weigh
And when moan comes
My hearth is rekindled
Out shining
That which can never be
Holy defeated
Burnishing everything I knead
This poem is about both hope and the striking temptation of violence. Violence begets violence. Hate begets hate. Likewise, love can overcome hate and violence. Hope is embodied in nonviolent resistance to violence and injustice. If we succumb to merely returning violence for violence, then we reinforce the cycle we supposedly resist. If we don’t recognize and accept that at the deepest level of reality my enemy and I are one, then discord will be borne again…and again. Violence is very hardy because it so predictably riles our most base instincts, the basic structure of our bodies and rudimentary psychology; that is, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Practicing the discipline of nonviolence is the way to break free from this self/other destructive chain of causal events. Human will is transcendent, naturally rebellious, to this destructive lock-down of reactionary existence. This inescapable rebellion against being trapped in seemingly perpetual violence is the birth of hope and the path of peace and justice for all. An undefeatable aspect of human will always stands outside the seductive snare of merely reactionary behavior. Choosing a higher path is possible. As Gandhi so simply and boldly declared in word and deed, “Peace is possible.” We can choose to dishonor this higher aspect of human existence by choosing to settle for reactionary participation in a seemingly inescapable chain of crap that nobody really wants but someone else “makes” me do, as if I am some soulless machine, voting in a rigged game. This dishonors our true maker, mysterious and gracious. Perpetrators, those who are most deeply embedded in the illusion that violence will give them the long end of the stick that is one humanity, erroneously believe that they possess some superior will in manipulating the machinations of the day to their advantage (at the expense of others). Rather, their self-serving complicity with reactionary destructive violence is a denial of creative human will and hope for peace and justice for all. To escape their own self-dehumanization they pompously attribute their apparent success in navigating the status quo of reactionary existence to a superior will, somehow free from others’ claims on them. These so-called winners look to themselves apart, seeing themselves as self-made men — in a palpably peculiar insult to their mothers. And as I like to say: if you are a self-made man, you have a fool for a maker. Victims residing down the chain of injustice can mirror their perpetrators’ weighs by rattling the chain up or down, either giving the master curators of violence another specimen for their museum of humanity, or perhaps honing one’s hurt on someone even less able or willing to react commensurately. The predictability of violence is captured in the insularity, unaccountability, and disconnect from humanity (their own and others’) that perpetrators of the powers that be experience in wanting mastery over their own lives. The predictability of violence among victims is rooted in the reactionary reality that hurt people hurt people. People tend to do what they know. Can we know peace and justice, or at least cultivate its possibility? While experiencing the hurt of violence and injustice can be a powerful impetus to respond unkind, it can also be a profound invitation to solidarity, empathizing, connecting and standing with others, each of who have experiences of hurt and injustice. This is an aspect of God’s mysterious “preferential option for the poor” whereby reality is constructed in such a way that the poor have better access to their humanity than the rich. As Brethren to awe/And cistern of tears we are better equipped to join together and bring peace and justice into the whirled. May it be so.
