It Is Us

It is the singing bird. It is the yellowing pages of old books gathering dust; It is hot bread. It is the sun, our beautiful laughs, and forgotten past. It is the sunflowers, and the grace with which they move. It is their quiet slumber at the end of day and the ease with which they rise in the morning. It is the butterfly, perhaps more it than the cocoon. It is in the way bees make more honey than they do sting. It is a baby’s first cry, It is the song on the Sunday radio, It is the man on the corner tugging on his guitar, paid in half-eaten pies. It is the humble transitions of humanity. It is the first time a songbird leaves the nest, Majestic in both music and flight. It is the bird’s first injured wing that commands its best. It is the first war that we must fight: To profit. To conquer. To service another man’s politics with all our righteousness, our rage, our might, To never see the burning huts, wailing kids, and men of the cloth hogging tithes. It is the caged bird. It is the cocoon, perhaps more it than the butterfly. It is our barbaric ways and bondage for the crumbs of cold bread. It is a man’s final breath and the earth under which he lies. It is evil. It is children assembling weapons in bathtubs. It is the man that fears his own kind because he is more dung than beetle. It is the man that expects condemnation, like babies in mosh clubs: It is gunpowder, It is old people, it’s brittle bones and firepower. It is love, it’s buckets of bullets, babies and bombs in asylums and hotels. It is us, and our gospel.