THE ART OF PEACE
Where Are the Bridge-Builders?
by Kayt Pearl
The world is exploding.
Acrimony smothering the news front
All pages turned,
All buttons clicked
lead to doom….
Of a person,
a home,
a nation,
a people,
a trust,
….a bridge.
Where are the bridge-builders?
We must be relentless.
Scraping together the rubble blasted from once-firm
foundations,
Pouring the glue of humanity, the fertilizer of constancyin-repair over the steaming shrapnel.
Conspiring storytellers spit rhetoric for followers
Anti-anything headlines insidiously cloaked like
Disney animation.
It is there, in the entertainment and laughter, in the
innocence and candor.
Acculturated racism, like silent poison in the water supply.
We are pocketing false change every time we blindly read
and believe.
Swallowing plastic, and waxed cardboard
Calling it food
Accepting credit like it was a lifeline.
Walking faulty bridges to Pleasure Island.
We’ve been marooned.
Where.
Are.
The.
Bridge-Builders?
32 IMAGINE l SPRING 2016
I feel as though my tongue is being held captive by an army
of swords.
Any talk will cut someone.
I am afraid I will flounder on my disbelief and fall silent
anyway.
My eyes choked
On story after story
War field after killing field,
parading as greener pastures.
What is this madness in the brain.
Sickness in the heart.
Our disputes turning rivers to cement
And from the crumbling dust of what once was life,
We make our bread.
Even without the water
We will be drowned, starved, and poisoned
By that off which we feed.
In my prayers
I hear
“All of this is necessary.”
Plagues of derangement and rage
The world collapsing in on itself while
Conquerors detonate
Enmity inflames,
Fires catch like contagious contempt.
Blood boils up through every crevice,
Every corner and curve
of this majestic planet
As if to say
“No stone unturned.”
The alchemy
The transmutation
Must touch
Each and every fiber of sentience.
So no one will forget.
No one will forget.