There’s a frightening reality exists around our lives

we’d like to believe it isn’t the panic our mind derives.

~

Yet, how else can we explain the mounting tension,

the averted eyes, the tarnished world we mention.

~

Would that it mattered our own lives hang in the balance

that we imagine we might never have to take a chance

~

at living on the edge, at realizing any moment we could

be sacrificed in the eyes of the majority that would.

~

If they might allow the world to crumble into mediocrity

than perhaps we ought to recognize some new civility.

~

I once believed that everyone could always get along

I didn’t know soon there’d be a man who didn’t belong.

~

A woman who might have tears at the loss of her own

ability to protect herself, after the stitches have been sewn.

~

I wonder about the man whose scrutiny became passe

until a friend or a colleague or a family – you know the way.

~

We are a populace of similar mind and quiet fortitude

so alike we would laugh if we ever embraced our attitude.

~

Take a minute to glance around you tonight, tomorrow, now,

see the world in a day as it stands nearby as societies allow.

~

We measure our lives too easily by the growing masses,

Little thought reminds us we are really quite the asses.