More obvious than DNA, presence
or personality: identity. Individually,
names are given out by someone else,
by family or memory. Titles awarded
before character is developed,
without our knowledge.
A voice we live with. Should you
call out, what will you hear? A name:
in the end, all we are left with. Goodbye.
What you remember and often forget.
Introduction requires random thought
of specific examples.
Fingerprint fact and interpretation, a
name, birth date, statistics, history always
living proof of every step taken, up until
now. Evidence you are all you believe in,
selfish presentation of self-image, under
circumstances that change along with us.
Do you represent what others might think?
How well do they know you? Would you
be any different under any other name?
Will that person remain the same as you
if it were true? Hello. Ask yourself.
It is a hard title to live up to.
© 2021 j.g. lewis
2 replies on “What Will It Take”
Oh, that the spirit of those times would again rise up! I’m not sure one can “push harder” to share love. What was magical about those times is we just loved. We just shared. We just cared. We walked into a space of love and caring that was so big, so expansive, so embracing that we simply floated on it… beyond the confines of body/mind and rules. But we scared the crap out of the establishment who couldn’t grasp such love and freedom, and so what did they do? “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” Love almost won.
I maintain the belief that LOVE can win (a belief I refuse to ignore), but to do so we must battle the hate that has spilled into society. There is now – and you truthfully speak of – a political will to deny rights and freedom; to both confuse and condemn those who attempt to oppose the politics of power. This top-down injustice is allowed to flourish because people have stopped caring (not all of us, but…). I am but one who would love “the spirit of those times” to rise up again. So I tlak peace whenever I can. I try. We all need to try harder. deep peace to you.