Witness

Do we close our eyes to vanishing girls, beaten children, women, men?

Do we turn our heads to racism, oppression, injustice?

Do we steal the spirit of the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the old?

Feeling safe in an apathetic world alone. No feeling, no emotion, no thought.

Do you feel safe, secure, peaceful, in your selected ignorance of life, living but not alive?

Or is that you feel a glowing, burning hate as you see the unfeeling beheading of an innocent man?

Feel your gut wrench with fear from young girls stolen, homeless people weather, babies dying of starvation?

The loss of natures own when in our greed we destroy the very innocence and beauty God created.

Have we become monsters ourselves in this “all about me” world that we have lost the meaning of life, love, unity?

Has our hatred or our apathy become such a cancer that we now infect eachother as well as our self?

Will our minds explode in either the emptiness of nothings from choosing to hide, or from the molten lava of hate that spills down the peaks of our spirit?

Who will stand up to seek the light of truth instead of allowing the apprehensions to feed us the butler wines that contrive to grow these weapons of self destruction?

Who will fly to freedom by seeking answers of why we continually lose that which is good by choosing that which destroys us?

Race, religion, man, woman, greed, wealth, poverty, wars.

Age old weapons meant to separate, destroy, and oppress.

Who will see through it all, stand up to it, and finally break through to see the truth?

Not the truth fed by others. Not the news, the television, the radio.

But unafraid of persecution or death speak on the truth that we have allowed others to oppress.

Dine on our minds, rape our souls, then spit us out when we have nothing left.

When will we stand up?

Put a hand out to another and shout back at the monster we’ve allowed and created and send it back to the pits of hell.

When will hate and apathy be aid to rest and each of us freely look at the person next to us and not see color or age or belief.

Who will see the reality instead of the matrix created by others?

Who will stand?

-Paulina