The lover that left too soon, the other that stayed too long;
the driver that cut you off in traffic;
the weatherperson that never gets the five-day forecast right;
the upper class, middle class & lower class;
the infirm & elderly;
Republicans & Democrats;
Hispanics, Blacks & Whites;
Israel & Palestine;
suburbanites & Skid Row denizens.
We all need to make an enemy outta someone.
Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevic,
Pinochet, Pol Pot & Ratko Mladic.
They all needed to make an enemy outta someone—
practically everyone but themselves.
Slavery, segregation;
the Civil War & two World Wars;
Vietnam & 9/11;
the Trail of Tears & Mandela imprisoned;
Hiroshima, Nagasaki;
the Oklahoma City Bombing;
Kent State & Tiananmen Square;
Columbine, the L.A. Riots & global genocides.
Everyone’s got a finger poised
ready to hit the Doomsday button
like it’s some super-hot G-spot.
We all need to make an enemy outta someone.
The Lincoln assassination,
JFK assassination,
John Lennon,
Malcolm X,
Medgar Evers,
Harvey Milk,
Che Guevara,
Trotsky & Ghandi assassinations.
It’s insane,
the way we’ve let guns do the speaking
instead of peace talks.
And somewhere in the midst of all this bloody history
Martin Luther King Jr. once called out: “I have a dream, I have a dream…”
But sometimes it’s hard to keep a dream alive,
especially when you’re caught in the devil’s crosshairs.
We all need to make an enemy outta someone.
Cover-ups,
pay-offs & corruption;
secret torture sessions & death.
Invading Libya, Iraq & Afghanistan.
For all the lies our government has told
its lips may as well be blue:
Truth asphyxiated.
This suicidal tendency,
a blemish of supremacy
on the face of our nation.
We’re well on our way
to making enemies out of everyone.
Pretty soon,
we won’t even be able to call
our own shadow a friend.
We all need to make an enemy outta someone.
It’s a fatal attraction,
the way we make ourselves gasoline
when someone’s heart’s on fire.
We just wanna see all the love
go up in smoke.
And in the name of the Bothered, Stunned & Tortured Ghost,
let me say:
Instead of worshipping,
we’ve spent way too long
warshipping all our Gods & Goddesses
with bombs instead of prayers.
That’s what happens when you spend too much time
in the zero church:
You never get your soul’s worth of healing.
And so we continue
to prey upon others
with this religion of vengeance.
We all need to make an enemy outta someone.
Author’s Note: If you’d like to see a video of this piece, click here.
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