Bound By Bitterness

The trauma of injustice fertilises our souls till we are but a shadow of our former selves

It is the red that stains the hands that scalp law breakers 

Vigilante justice has destroyed our humanity;

we have forgotten how to feel

Too wound up in fierce despair and blind ferocity to listen.

Our eyes seek tabloids and newsworthy columns but our insight is as a cloudy lens,  

contaminated by hate and calcified logic.

 

we are too tightly strung; stuck to a mental rung in arbitrary frenzy to unseat the dictator.

We can be healed of this madness but only if we start to feel;

really feel the fear of those who travail through the same troubles we do

 

we must learn to reason not as fools but as the freed

not as slaves but as saints - to fight as victors not victims

for surely he who fixates on death is already defeated.

 If we are consumed by vengeful obsession

to rip the heart of the cantankerous viper

are we too then not as he is?

 

 Our freedom thrives when we look through the panes at the pangs of a wider world

When we believe that only one type life suffers the fiery furnace 

we become the masters of our own bondage.

For hatred has never liberated a slave –

it is his hunger for peace and an awakened sense of worth that snaps the shackles from his feet.

 

it is wisdom that trounces the yawning grave  

it does not do battle with the wallets of thieves neither does it 

fight to lighten the widows veil  or brighten candles crying for the dead

our eyes must peruse triumph 

and we must arise in unflinching pursuit of a victory wrought in toil…..in pain…in hunger,…..

we must pulverise kingpins and warlords through our poise and immovable dignity

in cleverness not in carvers and cleavers

for light and darkness are both colourless in death - enquire from the authors of war

a heroes heart in the hands of the enemy is a witless retort in perpetual starvation.

It is he who forsakes his bitter interlude that lives to free the fettered.

 

(C) Jambiya Kai

(AKA known as Beulah Kleinveldt)

 "Bound by Bitterness" is easily one of the finest poems I have ever read. I have thought often on these same subjects but I have never been able to express myself in any way like this!"   *Hugh Halff - American Visual Artist; Poet; Writer