Hour Sixteen<\/p>\n
Sequestered away in fear
\nlike a deer in the headlights,
\nwide-eyed at the atrocities
\nof human nature.
\nI once wore a misanthropic hat
\nlined with burs of Burdock
\nthat clung to the scalp
\nripping out my hair in chunks.
\nMy experience with humankind
\ntaught me in years past
\nthat love equates pain
\nand is tantamount to hate.
\nImages of the evil and suffering
\nthat filtered out hope
\nreplacing it with depictions of abject terror
\nof the propensity of human error
\nand the clouded expressions
\nand dire tones speaking
\nin monotone at every media outlet
\nregurgitating the vomitous acts
\nof those negligent and self-serving,
\nthoughtless and Godless
\nstomping through this world
\nwith entitlement creasing their stature
\nbranding themselves with a beastly mark.<\/p>\n
I had closed my doors,
\ndonned my hat,
\nand sat in muted silence
\nwaiting for life to pass-
\nthe self-proclaimed hermit
\ncantankerous and disillusioned
\nto faith or hope or the dream of being loved
\nand having someone to love purely in return.
\nI devoted myself to silence, learning,
\na detective in search of an absent
\nrealization that I would soon learn.
\nWhat I had learned at first
\nwas how so quickly the heinous
\nrebellion of humans
\nhad overridden the softness of humanity-
\nthe fragility and fleeting existence
\nforgotten of how precious it is
\nby hardened hearts.
\nIt was within the stillness
\nI realized that, I too, had hardened
\nand by blockading myself from
\nthe outside world,
\nI posed no threat to the avarice
\nthat exists outside my doors.
\nHow broken and cutthroat
\nwe all have become-
\nignoring a problem
\ninstead of facing it head-on.<\/p>\n
It was the I decided
\nto open the floodgates of compassion
\nthe windows of empathy,
\nand the doors to the opportunities
\nto create a small corner-
\na hearth to warm the hearts and hands
\nof those passerbys-
\nto offer shelter in an absorbent shoulder
\ncatching tears in my palm as though my own
\nas I allow myself to feel their pain with them
\nand wipe away what I can with kind words
\nand heartfelt gestures.
\nNo longer adding to the problem-
\nI hung up the misanthropic hat
\nand warmed myself by the fires
\nof humanity’s potential. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1485,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5772,5765,680,193,3019,2158,326,15,228,391,10,355,390,1084],"class_list":["post-139773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-2023fullmarathon","tag-2023poetrymarathon","tag-poetrymarathon","tag-193","tag-24-hour-poetry-marathon","tag-full-marathon","tag-marathon","tag-poem","tag-poems","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-marathon","tag-writer","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1485"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140118,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139773\/revisions\/140118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}