I do not know how many people are reading poetry today. But for the last year or so, I find poems popping out of me. And, my ego aside, they seem to be important reflections of our times and our situations. And if they have any value at all for society at large, I must share them. While, my planning was to save up these poems and put them into another book. For some of my latest verse, I do not think there is time to delay in getting out whatever usefulness they may contain. So, here is another poem.

How Do I?

How do I break through to
A captured people
Who, though given land
And free range,
Live within invisible fences
That don’t exist for me?

How do I relate to
Lives where “less” is their daily bread
And being called “less” their daily message?

How can I know
Their thoughts, their desires, their needs
When the world has told me,
Since my first squall,
My white life matters more?

How do I stop dwelling on I?

Native lives matter
Black lives matter
Women’s lives matter
Other lives matter.

Women are easier,
Half of each of my cells
Carry the X of femaleness.
Yet I do not carry
The worry of women.
Yes, bullies have beaten me
But rape is not my fear,
And walking the streets alone
Is not my daily risk.
Force is more my friend
Than enemy.

Human genes are human genes
In all of us.

Music helps.
The drumbeats and chants
The jazz and raps,
Lunches and dinners
Working with others
Talking
The voices.

Hearing the voices
HEARING THE VOICES.
Clearing the way for voices
And listening.

Stop the clatter
Of the I in my mind,
And listen to you.

© 2019 Carl Scott Harker