Let us look at how we value violence
As a path to behavioral societal corrections
As part of necessary sacrifices
Let us assess our own silence
By measuring the connections
Between our comfort and its ever-raising prices
The costs stem from the choice
To view violence as a problem’s viable solution
Without acknowledging to the maimed and the buried
There is never restitution
We make the pivot to violence causally
We put it into games and entertainments
We view it as a path to power and strength
Instead of as one the souls most damaging contaminants
Sometimes judgement is the mirror
The sentence a song you hear in your head
Now the singer’s voice is growing clearer
Lilting the names of the dead
Maybe you know one among them
From Fallujah or Ferguson
From Aleppo to Attica
Maybe your fist is clenched
As you look upon the protests
Maybe your heart is wrenched
Seeing the agony and the tears of the oppressed
Maybe we start today
Acknowledging a scale that weighs our choices
And that the price we might pay
Is our loved one’s silenced voices?
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
BeardedRiffRaff.Blog 