WE ARE THEM: MAYBE A POEM, MAYBE NOT

They, like us, are here,
Silent, waiting for something,
Anything, to give a sense of being,
Of doing, of actively pursuing something,
Anything, that would make sense
Of all of this.
To understand is to change, to choose
And they like us must pretend that
There is sense here and bright souls.

They are pariahs at home
And in church, they are crucified
And buried deep in pure waters
Of sanctimony and saintly hypocrisy.
They are cured and exorcised,
Pushed aside at work like screen doors
On summer evenings when
They melt in the sun of cackling logs,
Fiery spectacle, doctrine and dogma,
Indoctrination and scientific doggerel.

They, like us, scrape against gravity,
Seeking the sky like birds without wings, Seeking the sea like fishes without fins.
They jostle for space to be heard;
Skin, sex, faith, wealth,
Then like us they jostle for eyes to sleep.
They fade in and out of time and space
And each one say that they were
Not that they are or that they will be.

If they are us or like us, then
These trees and rivers, these flowers
And God's own green grass
Is space enough to breathe, to move
Beyond existing in shadows to living
In the warmth of the sun, alone
Or lonely, loved or consumed in lust.

Each of them who are us
May wait for truth to peal across
Like the laughter of innocent children
But whips can only be broken if hands
That wield them be weak with shame
But we are cruel not because we need to
But because we are they and we
Hate to see that we are not what
We always thought we were.