There is a deep pain in seeing human lives restrained, and a
tremendous joy when those restraints are broken through education,
interaction, and the pursuit of dreams.

I rise to the news of our forests burning.
The two degrees they warned us about already surpassed.
It’s happening faster than expected, the models too slow.
It’s already too late, the ice is melting.

I don’t know how to do this, this thing called hope.

I am suffocated by the lies that go viral,
by the pain we call the news.
How am I suppose to find hope in tomorrow,
When the future is burning, everything in flames.

We look the other way, not wanting to get involved.
We voice our opinion, but only to those who agree and listen.
We grow accustomed to the new norm, forgetting how things were.
We ignore the signs that history is repeating, believing we are different than before.

 Erosion of the cor    ners of the foundation,
  cracks that grow    from within.
   Bricks removed,   one by one,
  and the mortar re   turns to sand.

This is how we collapse.
This is how we crumble.
This is how the dictator
turns democracy into rubble.

These past few weeks have left me speechless. I simply don’t know what to say. It’s not that I don’t have emotions or reactions, rather I don’t want to feel what I am feeling—hopeless, horrified, completely disappointed in our government, the actions of individuals, even in our species.

Once again we are rising up, reawakening to power differentials, taking action and saying “No more!” Is this real change and an upward trend, or a momentary flutter in an historic review when we look back a few centuries from now?

In the lifetime of my grandmother she saw the rise and fall of lynchings by the KKK. In the lifetime of my father segregation in the U.S. came to an end (mostly). In my lifetime we have seen the end of electroshock therapy and sterilization of those who have learning disabilities. We will look back on each of these in disgust and wonder how it could have been.

But how quickly do we revert to the behavior of the prior generations? Are we truly changed as a species, reprogrammed at a fundamental level, or are we more simply rewiring our expectations with the underlying systems of interplay nearly identical to 100,000 years ago?

In our places of work, school, and social engagement, we talk about awareness and education. We engage in difficult conversations and walk in the shoes of those we do not understand. We remove people from power who are abusive to the minority and the under privileged. I ask, Are we affecting change at the source? Or are we just temporarily modifying the behavior of a half generation, the next to come along reverting to what we thought was erased?

Maybe we are on an upward trend, a global consciousness rising. Maybe the current rise of dictators and fascism and hatred for “the other” is a momentary, interglacial freeze in a longer warming trend. Or maybe Roddenbury got it all wrong and four hundred years from now we will not be unified as a species, exploring brave new worlds, rather we’ll still be fighting our synthetic racial divides and protesting brutality every quarter century.

We share the most homogeneous code of any species on the planet and it has not evolved to thrive in this overfilled, boiling pot. I fear we will continue to invoke change at a superficial level only to wonder a hundred years from now why we’re doing the same damned thing over and over again. We need to stop pointing fingers and implicating that that person is racist and that other is not, when this is but a temporary fix. We need to dive in deep and look to the source of these behaviors as functions of home, school, church, and the very foundation of cultures and nations and the social construct of our species.

Yes, we have to keep trying. That too is fundamental to our species. We keep working for a better world in which we reward unity over division, and the minorities at both extremes share power with the majority.

The last time I read a book must have been some time ago,
for no longer do I recall the cover, the title, or the hero.

Instead, my days are filled with tasks and action items and to-dos,
The only action I see is when I press the wrong key,
all mystery, crime, and murder DELETE’ed.

How is it that the very thing we seek our entire life,
is the very thing we grow afraid of?

For having finally received it,
we make the mistake of believing
it is ours to own.

Each morning I take in the latent aroma of freeze dried coffee and hear the monotone voice of the radio reporter who calls out the price of beans and corn, the auctioneer’s rhythm unmistakable. The soft voices of my grandparents speaking to each other echo in my memory of the early morning kitchen table. The door to the stairway would be open such that it blocked most of the entrance to the kitchen, reducing the clamor of breakfast preparation to a minimum.

No matter how I tried, I never woke early enough to catch either of my grandparents descending the creaking stairs, for Grandpa was there, sitting in his chair at the table, smiling when I came in.

“Well there he is! ‘morning Kai-boy!” he would say.

Grandma would chuckle, turn from the counter where she tended to a pot of oatmeal, and smile. “How did you sleep Kai?”

There was not a single morning, not as a boy, teenager, young adult, or even in my thirties when I tied my business road trips into visits to the farm that I did not feel welcomed, respected, and cherished. Those smells, sounds, and voices are yet here, alive, vibrant. They are welcomed ghosts of more than a decade ago. The rattle of the glass pane at the top of the stairs, the static of the countertop radio, the subtle hiss of water through the pipes from the basement to the main floor, and ultimately, the sound of Grandpa opening the ground level door that brought the smell of fresh cut grass, rain, or sheep inside.

This is why we come back here, to our family farm. This is why this place, more than any other feels like home.

The more we barricade ourselves from others, the more others want to get in.

The more we hide our bodies, the more the unclothed body is appealing.

When will we learn to accept who we are, and recognize that we have constructed our entire civilization on the false pretense of sin?

When I feel safe,
I open my arms
and welcome you wide.

When I am insecure,
I shut down,
run and hide.

When anyone but you
confronts me,
I deal with it fine.

But just one word,
“no” instead of “yes”
or an uncertainty that leaves me to guess
and my heart is left in pieces,
my maturity replaced.

Once again, I am a mess.