Whale Watching

 

Troubling times come with
troubling words;
words weighted with lead
fired from angry mouths,
shooting through
every discussion about
us and them, and those
and theirs.

Fighting words, cursing words,
belittling words, dehumanizing words,
spewed from the vomitous gizzards
of small men; splashing on the shoes
of decency and common sense morality,
without apology or self-awareness,
without humility and even the hint
of reasonable shame.

The tribes of men,
hawkishly dangling their
bravado, unembarrassed by
the lack of quality and size,
only to act wounded and rageful
when their bravado goes unappreciated
by those they want to attract or intimidate.
They don’t know which is which.

Troubling times for the honest and decent;
the self-aware and the modest, they are most
abused by the bullying lunkheads who
lumber about spouting hate rhetoric recycled
from the 1940’s, just repurposed for modern times,
always with the same goal;
to hate a white whale so much
that destroys everyone involved in the hunt.

Troubling Times,
call for peaceful words,
from better poets than me.