How much we mortals err each day,
Unseeing, unaware. Too true.
Blind, selfish beasts, we lose our way,
Seeking apples where pears once grew.

We choose a wall when caught in wrong,
Yet when the error’s plain to see,
We claim the fault – where fools belong.
I’ll leave the judgment to posterity.

Who knows they nothing know, yet speaks,
Dreams aloud in tyrant’s tone,
Judging, childlike, reckless, weak,
Neglecting needs not of their own.

Who knows not they know naught, and yet
Can’t grasp the right or wrong at hand,
Would, even to Christ upon the cross, forget
To offer a crust of bread, so grand.

Who’s white, green, a nationalist proud,
Training sharks within a moat,
Of hidden clauses, never loud,
To keep a refugee afloat.

Who sins through gluttony, all else done,
And points at saints, mascarpone-stained,
As if no penance need be won
While holy virtues are disdained.

Who studies life shut up at home,
Preaching manure without a thought,
Denies both God and Satan’s tome,
Choosing logic, friends forgot.

Who’s friends with many, yet come morn,
Remembers not a single name,
Keeps a rope, two photos torn,
And a bottle for the blame.

Who steals even from death itself,
Has hunger yet at night won’t eat,
For tomorrow’s fate turns on the shelf,
Perhaps a rigged poker’s beat.

Who hires but never pays the wage,
Drives distracted by a new construction,
His pen upon a contract’s page,
And feels himself an emperor’s function.

Who’s like me, a bit of all,
Yet too little for Dante’s pain,
But if my place in mourning’s pall
You find, speak of things more vain;

For I hear nothing from the deep,
Where I’ve chosen my grain-filled bed.
Let me in silence gently seep
Into the words I left unsaid.

I’m egocentric, deviant, cruel,
Or as we humans say, just right.
Perhaps that’s what I’ve always rued,
To know I’m not a special light.

---