You claim to hate math, but you love division;
Subtracting peace with every calculated decision.
You multiply chaos like it's long addition;
And solve for drama with precise precision.
You divide the bond that once made us whole;
Splitting unity just to satisfy your greedy soul.
You can’t balance love if conflict is the lenses you see your vision.
You’ll never find truth in division, till you divide your own illusion.
Thinking
two heads two thoughts
here's where we're divided
one analyzes one just does
Doubt
Families, friends, neighbors, communities,
living in the land of liberty.
A nation easy to divide,
fed by smears, seduced by lies.
Emotions worn like fragile sleeves,
hatred finds a place to breathe.
A sickness spreads, unseen but loud,
echoed through the media cloud.
Even when the facts aren’t true,
they comfort those who always knew.
We fracture more with every feud,
distrust becomes our daily mood.
Arrogance floats through the air,
ignorance tangled everywhere.
We elect with hope, then watch despair,
do they serve, or do they stare?
Freedom to vote, a hollow ring
when sides refuse to shift or swing.
You speak your mind, you risk the cost,
mocked, dismissed, your meaning lost.
We’re growing colder, more confined,
trapped in one-dimensional minds.
Opposition seen as threat,
truth becomes what we forget.
And when debate no longer lives,
hatred is the truth we give.
Divided Sky
Relentless downpour.
Reflections through rain puddles.
Angry lightning.
Wind binding.
Over-cast darkly.
Thunder striking.
Dark tones through juxtaposition.
Divided sky, emotions.
Contrast shaded purple hues.
Sky falling pursued.
Trees recognized from a distance.
Angry sky with trivial effections.
Light to haunted dark.
Solitary roaming through the graveyard.
Gloomy after-math.
Clouds velvet subsided.
("Outside Looking In Merit Badge" - MB #40, 2011, original oil)
Echo Chambers
'Everybody’s talkin’ at me
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echos of my mind….'
And so it is, and so it goes.
Everyone in their own worlds
Safe and secure within the confines
Of confirmation biases
Building castles made of sand.
Meanwhile the tide swells,
Waves come as they always have,
And always will, as everything we believe in
And hold dear will be washed away.
And still we dream
Secure in the folds of our ignorance
Of the rightness of our cause
Whatever it may be.
(6/2/24)
Beneath the inscrutable sky, blinded by divided eternities,
We are islands of yearning, adrift in fate,
Each bearing a mysterious longing, a desert within the chest,
And with every heartbeat, my sorrow robustly grows.
Fate, the ancient dramatist who in astral maps has decreed
That we be star-crossed lovers, struck by the curse of the falling star.
Painfully sweet is our allotment, a share of shadow and nectar,
Tasting fleetingly, in profound flight, from the sweetness of ephemeral intimacy.
This is the light we endeavor to clasp tightly,
Like Odysseus, shipwrecked in an epic of froth,
Clinging to the beam that thrashes amongst the violent and caustic waves.
You remained locked in a loveless alliance, you've watched too long.
Belatedly, we discovered each other, drawn by a sublime magnet,
Which seemed, in its ephemeral moment, too intense to be contained.
And thus, nature staged its wild banquet,
A cruel show, unintelligible to hearts, stealing away our happiness.
A vision seized me, before
The marriage of my kin.
Betrothed to a faith apart,
Like a stray from the hallowed ground;
where forefathers had etched:
A devout Catholic and a pioneer,
A premonition of life truth.
I wandered through the paddy field,
Where crystal water surged;
Fishes of all sizes I had a huge catch.
Between, a river parted,
As white as a snowy flake and high;
Down and below, muddy water reaches their neck.
A laundry basket, brimming over their balanced head
I waved them to join me where abundance flowed.
But they insisted on not coming,
For they had decided their life: shallow and creek
They'd to fetch the water with a small mug.
Life's destiny weaves one's tapestry
And no external forces can confine us.
The world is becoming
impossible to govern
Each person that island
Donne warned us about
All sense of belonging
in mirrors bespoken
The strength of shared values
—our vanity flouts
(Dreamsleep: February, 2023)
United we are very strong unite
Divided we are very wrong unite
United we are very wise unite
Divided we need an advice unite
United we are the winners unite
Divided we are the losers unite
United we are the choosers unite
Divided we are the beggars unite
Come on unite now or never unite
United we stand divided we all fall. Nowadays history seems to be having domino effects. attending public places of worship, public bathrooms, police brutality, institutions of learning, playgrounds, kidnappings are on the rise, hatred, jealousy and senseless mass murders in the land we call home of the brave and freedom where is the safety and happiness bestowed innocent and struggling people will it ever be hope that one day we will all unite.
A thin veneer of stormy war-clouds arising
To threaten the ever-roiling sovereigns,
Keeping the world in constant surmising
Hence no peace among the sister nations.
To threaten the ever-roiling sovereigns
Each greedily coveting the goods of another
Hence no peace among the sister nations
No family ties of ancestry, sister or brother.
Each greedily coveting the goods of another
Amassing armies for their supposed defenses
No family ties of ancestry, sister or brother,
Nations aggressively building needless fences.
Amassing armies for their supposed defenses
A fragile world divided into opposing castes,
Nations aggressively building needless fences
Makes a thinker wonder how long it can last.
A fragile world divided into opposing castes
Keeping the world in constant surmising,
Makes a thinker wonder how long it can last
A thin veneer of stormy war-clouds arising.
Written May 10, 2022
We have not been this divided since the Civil War
I am not speaking of the country
I am talking about my relatives.
The ones they love
I despise.
The ones they revere
I see as misogynist, egotistical and bullying.
We can eat meals together
As long as there is only small talk.
If anyone brings up politics it is over.
People leave angry.
We have never had this in our family before.
I see trouble on the near horizon--
A nation divided just is not couth,
Unfortunately, reason is wizen
Frivolous theories accepted as truth,
Intentionally misguiding our youth
Disgraceful political grandstanding,
Foundation institutions crash-landing
News media is shaping opinions,
Honestly, journalism notwithstanding
Common folks now political minions.
written August 13, 2021
Thunderbolts split the stormy air.
The campaign for president heats up.
Insults and curses, accusations and lies,
Hate and confusion, poisoned barbs
Aimed at and finding a mark,
Only to be retipped and redirected
Toward the original sender.
Racism, carefully disguised
As safety precautions. For whom?
Religious intolerance in the guise
Again, of our country’s safety,
Deliberately misinterpreting the facts.
Religious zealots posing as victims
So they can self-righteously
Deny others their religious freedom.
Party set against party,
Candidate against candidate,
And people more and more divided.
Whose rights are right, whose are not?
What are rights and what are not?
Deceits and insults the game of the day.
Who can prove the other to have
The most fatally flawed character.
Gone civility - plain and obvious facts
Hidden in a manure pile of lies
Poisoning the air, poisoning the minds
Of those who listen but do not hear,
Of those who see not what is the truth,
But only what they choose to see.
Following the Pied Piper to …….?
*Abraham Lincoln quote
A Nation Divided Has Me
By: Tom
1/18/2021
A-ngry
N-ervous
A-nnoyed
T-ense
I-mpulsive
O-bserving
N-eglected
D-ivided
I-maginative
V-exed
I-mperfect
D-isturbed
E-motional
D-epressed
Sub Categories
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