My people are the most hated people in history.
Am I the most hated person on this earth?
Benighted by night, I walk thug-haunted streets,
My only fellow the thug who follows me.
It is satisfyingly easy to hate a race everyone hates.
There is no guilt in hate the world validates.
No nation is so evil, could be so evil, or so good!
Can a people be despised because it gave birth to Goodness?
Can a people be despised because it wasn’t good enough
But wasn’t bad enough to either conquer or disappear?
My people gave birth to many religions, who loathe their mother.
Our identity deleted, our nation nullified, our humanity distrusted,
Our home is negated, old or new, proffered and withdrawn.
Every smartphone glares: hate this race and be spared!
Join certainty, fatal justice!
My people mothered high and low thought—deplored by both.
Sometimes our identity is to delete our identity,
Such unselfing the last refuge of affirmation.
Of course we sinned—but were we sincere?
Are you sincere in your sinning?
Some sinning was earthy, fun, inventive, a bit helpful.
But sinning is sometimes not fun.
Is the Unforgivable Sin to, unassisted, refuse nonexistence?
Is our Use to be the canary in the coal mine?
Though I feel the thug following, I still walk.
© Stephen Margulies, 2016
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| Anti-semitic graffiti in San Pedro Sula, Honduras from Wikimedia Commons |
2 comments:
Who indeed? Separations we can make in fundamental error make our agony. Yet we must speak our truth in time, as this poem does, and reccognize the dichotomy that we portray is only whole with underlying unity.
This poem gives me hope like a candle in the midst of deep darkness.
Who indeed? Separations we can make in fundamental error make our agony. Yet we must speak our truth in time, as this poem does, and reccognize the dichotomy that we portray is only whole with underlying unity.
This poem gives me hope like a candle in the midst of deep darkness.
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