The Whiskey Taster’s Flavor Guide

We Are Silent, We Are Still

Tak, tak, tak, tak
goes the gun;
in a raid of the dawn.
Ahh, Ahh
screams the child,
into fractured world born.
Shredded:
a body, another life torn.

Rhyming' old news.
So what's so good about today's?
Running from the real blues?
A recession of compassion;
inaction for gold:
a silencing transaction.
Silence falls on fields of killing.
We lie in our pity:
sticky and shitty the despair.
The answers we are taught;
range from don't know-
to don't care.
I know I would play my part
if I knew where to start
...would I?
I know something of the pain around
but how to give in?
How to die?

So many
beyond the overflow line,
sickened;
dining on these old platitudes.
We've needed something wider,
deeper.
His unattainable beatitudes
Demanding another
to play the game;
the same death creeps in.
Allowing His goodness
to bring only shame.
The blame we spin.
When we are uncomfortable,
our culture threatened.
We are loud and hate-filled,
love easily abandoned.
But when the straight evil
of theft, rape and murder
elsewhere comes to kill.
When hunger steals another
and war a thousand more.

Then we are silent then we are still.



"If you want to serve the age, betray it."
Copyright © | Year Posted 2011

Poem

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The Whiskey Taster’s Flavor Guide
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace