No, I don’t think so
I don’t like this
I don’t approve
of this

Too much certainty
Too much violence in voice, posture, gesture
Crowds are inherently evil
And their certainty is fundamentally a lie
about life, love, the world, self and other

But what do you do?
It’s not like what’s going on across the seas is fine and dandy
What do you do?
How to actually help?

It made me uneasy, walking behind his flag
I ran around by the green side of the gray library,
but further along on my way towards home the crowd was heard
What would you do?

You shouldn’t get your way by torturing, murdering, and raping
And what war through the streets where terrorists groove is free of the blood of innocents?
But this war, and the blood of their friends and families, is what they’d wanted
And this protest too
Everything plays into the hands of exuberant crime.

What should we do?
Everywhere the evil wins
I don’t think that crowd was shouting and rallying justice
Justice is gentler than that
But justice is so very gentle
that I wonder if it can do anything at all
Justice is so very careful
that I wonder what it can even do at all
Yet only Love is wise, and only wise justice is real justice
And Love is so very gentle, much gentler than chants to drum beats that sound like war drums like cannons like the same old shit dragging bodies through the same old streets

What would help?
This man is just worried and afraid by certainty when he thinks the way forward together is not so very clear at all, and that the only way forward for anyone is the way forward together all of us
This man is nervous and scared
But children are dying
And the hate-fire growing
He’s not helping
He’s just quaking in the beautiful bright surprising winter sunlight

Everything arranged so as to go dreadfully wrong
Their certainty crossed by theirs
How would wisdom steer from this distance?

The rally made me uneasy
for me and you and the space between
The rally made me sad
and hopeless
But maybe it just reminded me
I live in hopeless times
when the stars are aligned against the spirit
and one violence leads to another, while the soul is skipped completely over
But I don’t know that; I don’t know how the stars are arranging themselves; nor how much that arrangement controls what we upright apes effect

There’s no perfection
Let’s start from there
and try again

B Willard
A Whistletown
copyright A Watson