I want to call in beauty
From wherever she is hiding.
Liminal spaces which used to invite her in
Are populated by the waiting forms of anger,
War, and starvation
Waiting to strut their time on the stage.
It is that time again, in the turning of the ages,
Where man and nation throw up hands against
Other men and nations.
Despite the pleadings of the women,
The hippies,
The disaffected warriors of positive thought,
Who become increasingly angry and inarticulate themselves,
Throwing themselves against the bridges, and stores,
Train stations, and halls of power.
The children are hungry, the grownups starving
Dying in the streets of malnutrition and dehydration.
That rainbow I saw the other day took the pain from this awareness for but a moment.
I reveled in its beauty, as I groveled in the guilt of being so far away
From the suffering.
I have a choice of ten stores
To overfeed myself from
Just on the way home from that rainbow walk.
What can I possibly know?
If I find beauty in the war, that is also wrong.
War porn, they call it.
But what do I have to combat war itself with
Except beauty, and a loving life well-lived,
And the preservation of water and food.
“Look, you don’t have to do that! Just share!”
Rings false, as a message sent from people living in rainforest
To people living in a desert.
How do I know but that I might not be willing to kill,
If water were short enough?
In the end, questions of beauty get subsumed
Beneath the weight of the age-old question the historians have not solved;
Are they fighting for religion?
Or resources?
soundandmountains 