Demands for Explanations Not Forthcoming

Should I give you understanding

for your murder and hate

for your monochromatic dreams

fueled by terror  and guns?

As you look at your own pale face

in the mirror

does it make your blood run? 

What do you fear?

What do you fear?

Should I reject your shuttered understanding,

your insistent demanding

that this land beneath our feet

is rightfully white?

Even you can't pretend

that before your ancestors landed

there were nations here,

their face, not your face,

reflecting, refracting

in the lakes and rivers

you claim to own.

Even you can’t pretend

that named and nameless millions

were dragged from their home shores

only to make your pockets heavy

only to be ripped from family

only to be abused, raped, killed

unceremoniously billed

as 3/5ths of your humanity.

This truth delivers us

to your uncomfortable

denial—

Should I place you on trial?

Whose home is this home?

I’m as guilty as you

for slipping past the terror

invisible in my anonymous skin.

But I know I am guilty

and I admit I don’t know

where my balance rests

between easy anonymity,

 accidental ignorance

and my twisting, burning sorrow

for those you want dead. 

Would you change your tune of hate, given  the chance?

Or would you choose to continue

your terrifying, destructive

immolating

dance?

CHM

8/2017

I Pity the Child He Was

Somewhere deep inside all of us is the child we once were.

That  child is so often
too often
hidden
under layers.

Under layers of denial.

Under layers of
fancied sophistication.

Under layers of resume words.

Under layers of
carefully
curated
reputations.

But the child is there.

Somewhere deep inside our President, our leader
is the child he once was.

That child is hidden
under layers
of  denial.

Under layers of
opulence and extravagance.

Under layers of achievements
earned or invented or bestowed.


I think a lot about that child,
hiding inside our President,
inside our leader.

And I pity the child he was.

That middle child he was.

That confused child surrounded by
all the THINGS that money could buy,
all the STUFF
all the simpering voices
telling him superb half-truths.

How lonely was it to have been him as a child?

How empty was it
to have been
unable to tell
the loving friend
from the jealous?

How isolating was it
to have had
a father who demanded success
at all costs?

How confusing was it
to have grown up
hovering between
being told
he was everything
and yet not enough?

I've spent my adult life nurturing, guiding, helping to shape children
towards their future everythings and anythings.

In everything and everyone I have taught
the one thing that I tried to give every child
was the permission
to fail.

The FREEDOM to fail.

And once they failed
once they'd fallen,
I tried to offer them the strong hands
to help them back up
to try again.

The loving hands
and the honest voice
telling  the truth
especially when the child
didn't want to hear it
but needed to hear it.

I study our President,
this powerful, wealthy man
who is either entirely despised or entirely adored.

In his bubble of power and money
from which he can lure or purchase
adoration
I wonder...

does he have someone in his life
with the loving hands
and the honest voice?

Has he ever?

No, I may not like the man our President is

but I pity the child he was.

Lies

Grownups sometimes lie.

They explain their lies softly

as protection

and love

and as the best way

to give you the gift of innocence

and wonder

for as long as possible

before the world crowds in

but lies are still lies.

Lies to help you sleep at night

when shadows are goblins

and the wind is a ghost. 

Lies to help you fight fears

when bathtub drains want to pull you down 

and closet spiders are hungry.

Grownups sometimes lie

Lies to stop your worries

about neighbors firing guns into

safe spaces, everyday places.

Lies to smother your worries

about a world where

leaders  don’t always lead

and presidents are not always

presidential.

Grownups sometimes lie.

Lies to soften the 

silent forever of death.

Lies to prop up their own

desperate belief, wounded hope

that all people really are born equal

that we all deserve

life

liberty

and the pursuit of happiness.

that love is the great underestimated power

that can conquer all.

And then…

grownups tell you

to always

always

tell

the truth.

So

if you’re confused

and doubting

that’s okay.

Confusion and doubt

make you ask questions

and seek answers

and find your  voice

and hone your power

so that when you

become a grownup

you can demand

the truth.

You must

demand

the 

truth. 

6/10/17

CHM

Declarations

Today is the Fourth of July.
Arguably the pinnacle of patriotic American holidays.

When you strip away the barbecues, the picnics, the fireworks, the oom-pah-pah of patriotic tunes, what you are left with is a day commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence--the document marking the establishment of the United States of America.

It is a day on which Americans are expected to set aside fears, doubts and injustices and fill themselves with patriotic fervor and red-white-and-blue pride.

And burgers.  Lots of burgers.

But my heart is too full of fear for our country right now and my mind cannot set aside the doubts. Make no mistake, I love this country for what it could be.  For the potential and hope I still manage to see.

Disagree with me if you wish, debate me if you must  and hate me if you choose, but  I feel that this Fourth of July is diminished and stained with the waves of intolerance, hatred, greed and egotistical pomp that spreads like a contagious disease.

It is easy to blame President Trump for this. Logical even.  He's the main man after all.  The policy maker, the holder of laws.

President Trump is a handy scapegoat for the simmering, ugly underbelly of America that has dogged our heels since the creation of this country.

The rise of President Trump has made me feel impotent, powerless and hopeless. I don't know how to defend myself and my country against those who support President Trump, masking their intolerance, hate and fear behind bland word games.

For the supporters of President Trump, it's all about subjective reinterpretation.  The turn of a phrase.

When President Trump (and his cabinet members) lie, it's "telling it like it is".
When President Trump insults world leaders, it's " honest expression of his opinions".
When President Trump blurts out spontaneous, ill-considered and many times outright ignorant statements, verbally or on Twitter, he's being "genuine".

In my  cynical moments, I find myself  wondering what turn of phrase will pop up when President Trump has destroyed our global trade relationships, made the United States a worldwide laughingstock and has taken us to the brink of nuclear war.

So yes, for those of us who did not vote for President Trump it's easy to lay the blame on him.  Rather logical even.  He's the spark that lit a national fuse that Americans tried to believe didn't exist anymore (well, let's be honest--mostly white Americans)

But we cannot throw out the easy blame.

Trump, like the King of Great Britain 241 years ago, might be the spark, but we are the fuse that is allowing itself to be lit.   And the flame at the end of that fuse is blowing right back in our faces.

As  I considered sparks and fuses,  my mind went back to other sparks and fuses in our history.

Back to the spark and fuse that compelled a bunch of irritated, educated and moneyed white guys to thumb their noses at the King of Great Britain and start a new country.

This country.

So on this day, this Fourth of July, I decided to read the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence wasn't--and isn't-- without its issues.

For one thing most of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners.  The deep irony of drafting and signing a somber document demanding "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" while at the same time being a men who actually owned other humans as property was not lost on the founding fathers.  Most of the sources I found described the many debates and disagreements that hinged upon this very fact.

Finally they had to agree to disagree.   A copout if I ever heard one, agreed to for expediency's sake I expect as they tried to "see the big picture", not realizing that nearly all "pictures" are the big picture, depending on one's perspective.

But I digress.

For another thing, we need to remember that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were men.  Humans.  As capable of imperfection and nobility as any of us.  One does not need to dig too deeply to find stories of our founding father's mistakes, scandals and missteps.

I say this not to diminish their achievement or belittle their characters, but to point out that if these men, these educated and inspired but flawed and imperfect men could spark the beginnings of a new country, then surely we, 241 years later, could spark a revitalization of that same country.

So I felt compelled to read the document upon which this country, this government and this day was founded.  The document that these men wrote and signed and in which they, at least conceptually, believed.

The Declaration of Independence is a startlingly short document--shorter than a typical high school essay assignment.   Through the dated language one can feel the earnest anger from which it was written--the  feelings of desperation and betrayal aimed at  the ruler of the land from which the writers and signers came.

I can relate.

The grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence struck me as not unlike the grievances many Americans have now against our current president, Donald J. Trump.

I actually engaged in a bit of folly and re-interpreted the Declaration of Independence, aiming said grievances not at the King of Great Britain of 1776, but at President Donald J. Trump of 2017.  It took surprisingly few word changes to shift the focus of this revered document.

Surprisingly few.

Just as it takes surprisingly little to either bring us together as a country or to splinter us apart.

Our country is a balance.  A huge, interconnected, interdependent balance that is constantly shifting to one side or another and seldom--if ever--held at that magical point of equilibrium.

And on this balance, we are all connected.  We are connected across the history, geography and definition of this American nation as citizens just as surely as we  are connected as a species across this earth.   Our days of being independent have passed. We are tied together--person to person, state to state, country to country-- through our shared existence and humanity, through our beautiful,  ailing planet and in no small way through the lightning speed of the internet.

We are interdependent.

The boundary lines between countries, provinces, states and cities are fictional.  Divisive lines dreamed up by humans and in existence only thanks to our shared hallucination that the lines are there.

The lines are not there.

We put them there.

Just as we put in the lines that divide us from each other.

And in all our interconnected, interdependent, balanced-slightly-out-of-balance lives as humans, I ask what I always ask.

Why?





Sources:
https://www.constitutionfacts.com/content/declaration/files/declaration_aboutthesigners.pdf
https://www.usconstitution.net/declarsigndata.html
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-and-Slavery-1269536
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/quotes

A Single Story

I woke up this morning

I took the dog out for her morning pee,
letting her whirl around the yard chasing
the taunting squirrels in the tree.

I squinted up at the cloudy sky
that looked  so uniformly grayish
until I stood perfectly still to see the
almost subliminal swirls of shape
and shade.

Sometimes you have to stand still
to really see.

I brought the dog in,
made my self a cup of coffee
and opened my computer.

Every social media feed was buzzing with
variations on a single story:

On July 6th, 2016
Philando Castile was driving his car
at 9:00 at night
down a street
in St. Anthony, Minnesota.

Next to him sat his girlfriend
and behind them sat her 4 year old daughter.

A police car came up behind Philando Castile's car,
lights flashing,
and pulled Philando  over for a broken tail light.

These are the facts we absolutely know, facts upon which
everyone agrees.

But then we go into that dim place where facts are harder
to prove.

That place when Philando rolled down his window
and informed the officer that he was carrying a gun
and had a permit.

That place where Philando reached for his wallet,
for his driver's license.

That place where the police officer
made a choice,
or a guess,
or panicked,
and pulled out his gun
and shot Philando four times.

Then the dimness lifts as
Philando's girlfriend pulls out her
cell phone
and begins taking a terrible video
of her bleeding boyfriend slumped sideways in his seat,
blood tie-dyeing his white shirt crimson
while the officer outside keeps
his gun trained on Philando.

The officer outside shaking,
his voice raw and shrill.

In the backseat,
a silent four year old girl,
watching, hearing, absorbing it all.

Four lives intersected that night
over a broken tail light.

One life--Philando's life-- ended that night
over a broken tail light.

Yesterday
the officer with the shaking gun and raw voice
was declared innocent.

As soon as the verdict was announced
angry, protesting voices lifted,
the tears flowed,
Philando's mother captured on camera,
powerful in her everlasting maternal fury
over the death of her son.

And yet this morning the sun rose
and clouds moved
and dogs went out to pee
and coffee got made
and no one knows
how to do more
than join together in anger and pain,
and then slump back home
into the terrible impotent silence
of our leaders.

This is about far more
than police officers
and broken tail lights
and mistaken intention.

This is about guns
and fear of the other
and about honestly answering this question:

If Philando Castile had been white
instead of black,
would he still be alive today?

Not Today

If I were a new glimmer
about to be born
I would not be born today.

I would not choose now
to enter this world
in it's hateful disarray.

Terrorism
in Europe

anti-Korean movements
in Japan

LGBTQ Russian citizens
being tortured and imprisoned

Syrian refugees fleeing
a decimated homeland,

and Donald Trump
peeling back American's skin
to reveal the ugly ignorance and intolerance within.

No.

If I were watching
this
all this
from that unseeable place
where souls await,
I would not be tempted
to join a world
where humans
willingly give up
their better,
kinder,
wiser selves
for the fleeting betrayals
of
power
and pride.




CHM
6/4/2017

What Makes You Special

Are you afraid?
We're all afraid.

Are you angry?
We're all angry.

Do you feel threatened by forces beyond your control?
Do you wonder if your way of life is being challenged?

We all feel the threat of personal extinction.
None of this makes you special.

What makes you special
is precisely what makes you dangerous.

What makes you special is turning a blind eye
to greed and corruption,

What makes you special is compromising your better judgement
to support people in power who embody the worst of human nature.

Each time you choose
to listen to hate,
to believe half-truths
to follow without asking yourself "why",

each time you claim your God
is more vengeful and hating
than benevolent and loving

that which makes you special
makes you  more dangerous.

Hatred is easy.
Ignorance is easy.
Blind belief is easy.

These require nothing more than sitting on your couch
flicking through channels of talking heads who feed  hatred,

or wandering through internet sites that fuel ignorance
and wrap layers of lies around beliefs.

You can judge others
who are more like you than different.

But there is a remedy for what ails you.

Put down the remote.
Lay aside your phone.
Close your computer.
Stand up.

Then  step out your door with fresh eyes
and a heart that is ready
to embrace
the open beauty
that has been hiding
beneath your "special" hatred
all along.