Poetry is Good for America
There are deflagration and detonation
which differ in how they shock
That’s pedantic, if not too frantic
and I do not mean to mock
Incendiary times need cooling down
with caution and celebration
To avoid a sad conflagration
have your fireworks out of town
Can we reach our better side
bringing hard work to new visions
or are we only fight or flight?
Thoughts and prayers sent up the flue
papering over our divisions
all the hate we thought was through
We are made of contradiction
making peace is part of us
but fighting wars is our tradition
We are conflicted, we are still one
a little hope would be a plus
it seems so long ere the day is done
We can act with malice and spite
or press forgiveness to our hearts
fighting upwards to the light
Isolation in a divided nation
our brains are made for social smarts
stewing in our own frustration
All alone in our four walls
will our future be secure
drifting sadly through drafty halls
Turn to the very last page
willful pique or mindless cure
will it be peace or curdled rage?
Speak to kin and speak to stranger
Words can hurt and words can anger
Speak with care and speak with truth
Words can heal and words can soothe
In any deep dispute or grudge, in any division in a community or country, there are people who try to heal and those who work to cut us apart from each other. You can tell who is who by how they characterize the people you disagree with or have some doubt about.
The healers and peace-makers try to overlook differences and minimize them, to bring people into the tent, to break bread with them, to work with them towards common goals. They will speak of our shared family, our country, our community, and be welcoming. They compromise and dicker and negotiate and try to promote the similarity of people.
The people who benfit from divisiveness will emphasize our differences, will breed distrust and sow fear. The will characterize people they have a dispute with as ‘other’ — foreign, strange, dangerous, and do their best to make you think of them as less than human. They will attach labels to people, and propagandize against them. They will use your base instincts to make you fear other people and will insist you not associate with ‘them.’
I have an essential faith in the goodness of people. That doesn’t mean I don’t lock my front door, or not look first before I cross the street. It does mean that if I have a problem with a person, or a group of people, that I will seek an accomodation, a compromise, a meeting of minds. I’ll go have lunch with them, or visit their home. I will try to ‘destroy my enemy’ in the most effective fashion — by making them my friend.
This may not always work, but trying to understand why people disagree with you can only serve to increase your knowledge of yourself and them, and benefit you even if you can’t completely agree. Decent people exist in all groups. You should cultivate their acquaintence.