Hour Sixteen

Sequestered away in fear
like a deer in the headlights,
wide-eyed at the atrocities
of human nature.
I once wore a misanthropic hat
lined with burs of Burdock
that clung to the scalp
ripping out my hair in chunks.
My experience with humankind
taught me in years past
that love equates pain
and is tantamount to hate.
Images of the evil and suffering
that filtered out hope
replacing it with depictions of abject terror
of the propensity of human error
and the clouded expressions
and dire tones speaking
in monotone at every media outlet
regurgitating the vomitous acts
of those negligent and self-serving,
thoughtless and Godless
stomping through this world
with entitlement creasing their stature
branding themselves with a beastly mark.

I had closed my doors,
donned my hat,
and sat in muted silence
waiting for life to pass-
the self-proclaimed hermit
cantankerous and disillusioned
to faith or hope or the dream of being loved
and having someone to love purely in return.
I devoted myself to silence, learning,
a detective in search of an absent
realization that I would soon learn.
What I had learned at first
was how so quickly the heinous
rebellion of humans
had overridden the softness of humanity-
the fragility and fleeting existence
forgotten of how precious it is
by hardened hearts.
It was within the stillness
I realized that, I too, had hardened
and by blockading myself from
the outside world,
I posed no threat to the avarice
that exists outside my doors.
How broken and cutthroat
we all have become-
ignoring a problem
instead of facing it head-on.

It was the I decided
to open the floodgates of compassion
the windows of empathy,
and the doors to the opportunities
to create a small corner-
a hearth to warm the hearts and hands
of those passerbys-
to offer shelter in an absorbent shoulder
catching tears in my palm as though my own
as I allow myself to feel their pain with them
and wipe away what I can with kind words
and heartfelt gestures.
No longer adding to the problem-
I hung up the misanthropic hat
and warmed myself by the fires
of humanity’s potential.