(This is the 1st of a Quadriptych set of Poems on Peace)
Let me be clear from the beginning any honest discussion of peace begins by staring into the face of evil Not the cartoon mask of villains but the slow systematic evil Evil that traffics children like cargo it teaches hatred until it feels like normalcy until neighbors become executioners Ordinary hands commit extraordinary horrors Indifference calcifies to stone and thought itself collapses. Marcus’s story does not end in triumph At seventeen he was shot outside his high school not because he joined a gang but because he refused to His funeral was filled with teenagers They understood that sometimes peace is a luxury they cannot afford One in four women beaten One hundred million displaced Philadelphia streets— my streets where children fear to play rival war zones in their statistics And then the litany of mass shootings Columbine. Sandy Hook. Pulse. Las Vegas. Parkland. Buffalo. Uvalde. Grand Blanc. Not distant tragedies but the lived reality of families I serve The young who ask me “Why should I plan for a future when someone can decide to kill me while I buy groceries?” Children conscripted as soldiers Women sold like cattle Populations vanished by decree Young men with weapons of war end dozens of lives in minutes Viktor Frankl, survivor of the camps: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms— to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” I see the aftermath I sit with the grief I listen to the questions that have no answers Every abolitionist knew this mathematics Every civil rights worker knew this equation Every protector standing between trafficker and child They fought forces with more money more weapons more power than they could ever possess They fought anyway Not because victory was guaranteed but because surrender was unthinkable.
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