Witnessing In the Mall
I'm at the mall
waiting for my new lenses
to find their inside home
in my old outside frames,
Hopefully
not like new wine
in old
opaque skins.
I try to engage
with an anthro-war story,
"The Invisible Woman"
Feeling myself silently camouflaged
in a sedate sitting area
sparsely inhabited only by my eyes
searching
and ears
spying
Listening for what invisible witnesses
hear
and empathically feel
"In wartime,
trusting the wrong person
can prove fatal."
How much safer is trust
in peace time?
anthro-dominated
industriously capitalized.
Does living Earth
even feel like peace time?
Or Business As Usual
domestic abuse,
neglect,
silent, but not really nonviolent,
atrophy?
Degenerating entropy?
of a human child's boundless curiosity,
enthusiastic health,
win/win wellbeing
panentheistic luminosity.
"Virginia...
will do everything in her power
to avenge the brave people
she lost."
Is the only important difference
between brave patriotic people
and innocent victims of autocracy
a sacred v democratic division?
between anxious war
sacredly declared
and every shopping day
peace deal making
between secularized
competing consumer commodifying diplomats
Perpetually undeclaring
rights of conscientious
personal bodies
to remain innocent
of ballistic
nihilistic
trauma producing
and stress consuming intent.
Is hero-worship the only moral distinction
between society's righteous reactionary revenge
and personal power's need,
want,
self-righteous entitled greed
to avenge?
"Virginia knows,
now more than ever,
that failure is not an option."
A lot of pressure
stress
fear
anger
internal oppression
when mortality
and disempowering defeat
and disabling wounds
physical and mental,
natural and spiritual,
are not an option
When power is a weapon
wielded over OtherTribes
and cannot be a tool
kindly and carefully offered
without Othering.
Like seeing
with win/win restorative lenses
in old win/lose traumatized
Business As Usual
anthrosupremacist frames
For spying how exhausted I am
by silently witnessing
uncivil
anthro-war stories.
Copyright © Gerald Dillenbeck | Year Posted 2022
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