I looked

Look and See                     6/21/2018

Did you see it yet?

The undeniable pattern

Of reality

Staring at you

And staring at me. 

I heard it all

The greatest lies

Over and over again

But there was only

Just one problem

Reality.

Experience is by far

The greatest lesson

We can learn

The repeated statistics

Over time. 

The more you see

The more you know

For those who bother

To seek

And see.

The beaten

And the bloodied

The raped

And the abused.

The dead eyes of hatred

Blank and soulless

Everywhere you look

Like predators

Searching for food. 

On the bus

And on the street

In every doorway

All the clerks

And all the drivers.

No one dares speak it

The horrible truth

All of it on purpose

And all of it by design. 

Violent fools

Are easily manipulated

Expendable foot soldiers

Who believe

What they are told. 

Useful as a shovel

To lie and steal

Outnumbering us all

And waiting to kill.  

Unable to question

And unwilling to learn

Acting out on primal emotion

Jealousy and hate. 

But if you are honest

Then you might also know

What it feels like to try

And lose. 

Burned by someone else’s fire

And nothing but ashes

On the floor

An unpleasant reminder

Of greed and betrayal. 

How many?

Have also gone

The same as them

And the same as me.

Alive and dead

On a three dimensional screen

The hopes and the dreams

Lost along the way. 

I belong somewhere else

A place that I hardly got to see

Sold for a song

Long ago

And far away. 

If only we knew

All that was at risk

Then maybe

We could have avoided

All that useless pain. 

I was found not worthy

And I was judged incomplete

A deeply flawed man

Weighed down

With raw emotion.

But I was so much more

Than even I ever knew

The broken healed

And the lowly

Revealed. 

We who did not seek suffering

Had it come anyway

Crushed in the spirit

But raised up

By God. 

Ordinary people  

Will do extraordinary things

For with every disappointment

There is a greater opportunity. 

I did not know that then

For I had barely scratched the surface

The unintended accident

Of a million unrelated events. 

All of this comes together

To join us at last

The rag tag denizens

Of a world

Turned upside down. 

I am here

For a larger reason

And so also are you

The gift

And the gifted.

Take it now

And swallow it down

Deep inside

The spark

And the fire.

Let the good go on

Surviving till the end

No longer troubled

And no longer in tears.