What does peace look like? Feel like? Taste like?
How does it feel in your hands?
Can you crumble it like a cookie?
Mold it like dough?
Squeeze it like fruit?
Mash it like fingers?
Put it up to your nose. What does it smell like?
Nothing? Something?
What does peace look like?
Can you walk up to it on the street?
Can you push it? Fake it? Can you put in on your dresser and stare at it until you get tired of it?
Can you bring it somewhere?
Can you take it from someone?
What does peace feel like?
Can you wrap your arms around it? Can you make it stay?
Can you send it notes of your affection?
If it hurts you, would you send it on its way?
What does peace taste like?
Is it sweet like cherries?
Or sour like grapes?
Does its color linger on your tongue when you sip it cold?
Or will it burn your skin if it drips from your hands?
What is peace then if it’s none of these? How do we know it even exists?
If it has no form
No way to hold it
No way to keep it
No way to see it
How do we know peace is real, and not just a figment of our ideals?
Because our Elders said so???
I don’t know peace.
Not in this crazy world.
Where so many people are stuck on the kind of stupid no one heals from.
“Give peace a chance”, they say.
So I yell back, “Give Chance and piece!” So he can be at peace.
And not have to live to see his son suffer from police brutality.
Running rampant. This anger runs rampant.
This anger no one knows where it came from.
Is it a disease?
Is it contagious?
A virus that causes you to look at someone’s melanin
and get so sick, instead of calling him or her a nigger…
you pull the trigger.
To kill em quicker.
So there are no witnesses to your infection,
infecting
everything, everywhere.
Even if no one pulled out their smart phone. That time.
What could such a disease be called?
#IThinkIHateMyself?
Or
#MyMelaninHatingAncestorsWereAssholesToo?
Such things can’t be true.
A dying world on its edge of effects from their cause…
I pray for peace.
Sometimes daily.
But when I look around, I’m alone.
I’m confused by this hate
That comes from nowhere
This hate
It’s so thick you can taste it in the air.
Not enough sage.
I can’t burn enough sage
To purify all this hate.
It’s everywhere.
Is it in the water too?
Could it be this hate polluting our air, soil, oceans and food?
Are we so stupid to believe a justified mob holding their dead babies, Yelling:
“Fuck the Police”
can be quelled with peace?
Really?
Really.
Nobody really listens to poets.
Cause we’re poetic.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing poetic about this hate that plagues most things
And the people who eat from the carcasses of their pipe dreams.
Killing the Black Community
Is code for Killing the World Community.
It’s code for killing off World Melanin
Because melanin is lacking in them. Maybe.
Nobody listens to poets.
We ask questions, mostly.
But we ask the questions no one really wants to answer.
We check ourselves by checking the world lens
And we find that our best questions
Always come equipped with the most esoteric of answers.
Take your pick: Avenge. Revenge. Atone. Harmonize. Recalibrate. Wait.
What is peace? Certainly it isn’t the opposite of war. Cause war is merely man boys playing with human, people, animal and mineral toys.
Everybody knows that.
So what is it?
Is it a farce?
Is it a rouse?
Is it a way to keep people occupied by something other than fear?
“Here, try faith.” Someone great once said. Alas, he’s dead.
Someone killed him in cold blood.
Because he stood for peace. And started to win with it.
What does peace look like? Feel like? Taste like?
How does it feel in your hands?
Can you crumble it like a cookie?
Mold it like dough?
Squeeze it like fruit?
Mash it like fingers?
Put it up to your nose. What does it smell like?
Nothing? Something?
What does peace look like? Cause in my young adult life, I’ve never seen it.
I mean, I have. In my heart.
But I feel like, peace alludes most people.
Because they have to have it first
To give it away.
And with so much hate pervading so many things
Peace becomes a concept instead of a state of being.
And concepts are always the hardest to face…
until they culminate with rubber bullets and mace.
-e-