human beings
in our time
were born
with the freedom
of angels in blue heaven
they glimpsed the
smiles of buddha
of christ & of muhammad
as they frolicked barefoot
in playgrounds of delight
surrounded by fields
of sprouting human rights
nurtured by caring sunlight
& gentle rain
but even infants
have egos
& some babies
never grow up
they grab & they wail
& they want & they take
all their lives
what is it like
to be born with waves
& waves of torturing lust
in the heart?
to need to control
all the raging power
& infernal glory
of this world?
to covet the rights
of others? to fear their
freedom? to imagine even
the least critical citizen
as a personal enemy &
a threat?
what is it like
to be born into the mad
serpent cycle
of war & hate & fire?
the earth spins round
& leaves us here
& now
is it really time
for a global mad-man war?
time again, to kill off millions
or hundreds of millions?
& hurl so many lives
into the boiling black tar
of suffering?
3 egos are drooling
to grapple together
in our coliseum of history––
an out-of-order TV buffoon;
a smug communist party emperor;
& a primped-up Russian dictator
what dark forces
cursed them with
an urge to power
to harm as they will?
to see
murder
as a personal
prerogative
do not all living humans have
a right to say “stop!!!” to this?
& have they not a just responsibility
to resist?
or are their minds too
tired & atrophied
to care?
can peace put an end to war
before it starts?
the majority of humans
never vote
much less have
any chance
to choose by whom
or how their world is led––
they’re simply raising their
children, tending their parents &
sacrificing themselves
to need
politics & its temptations are
the highest cost sports on our earth––
our smartphones wrest our
attention to consume all the horror
we are permitted & encouraged
to see
how can beauty, or God, or faith,
or justice, or kindness, or wisdom,
or democracy, or love, or law
save us as we tumble together into
the burning garbage can of human
fate?
there is a quiet voice; a hymn
inside every one of us––
& each of us possesses an empathic
beating heart––
we all share the same mother earth
& the warmth of the same near-by star––
peace is our first human right
& all of us share this gentle planet
as our heavenly paradise