Value

After this weekend, after this summer of pain, I want to share this. Written earlier this summer, but so much so still applicable. 

7/8/16 Value

you buy yourself a gun

a good one and expect to pay a few grand

you paid the fee rolled the dice

and brought home your death to carry

a few grand! for protection ease of mind

not too high a price to pay

a gun requires ammunition

steel plated bullet rounds

stacks of magazines and cleaner oh and targets

so your aim doesn't drop out of practice

and of course the stickers the reputation

to build upon your car no one messes with you

just a few grand more

while clean out your gun one day

you hear shots across the corner

well versed in explosion patterns you know the range and weapon

into the fray you jump excitedly to defend your people

(forgetting perhaps we all are people)

alas you are hit alas you missed

the only one dead the Samaritan

barely old enough to be a man yet with two daughters

and now your daughter won't look at you

no words to say

what was the price for that?

Today's word is value by SSJE

and as I write tonight

at the end of a week of death

of hatred, confusion, and sorrow

all I can think

is that we have lost our sense of human value

we have trafficked, bought, sold, consumed ourselves

into bits on a computer screen

and we have failed to see

that we were undervalued

I wish I could say, no longer

and have it mean no longer

I wish I could tell every human being

you are worth far more

than your weight in plutonium.

Have every child grow up being told

you have dignity

and so does everyone else.

But what are the words of one in 7 billion

my chances of being struck by lightning are greater

so why, why stand up and say no longer?

what is one vote in the wilderness?

Ask a wren that question - but they cannot answer

they do not understand

no matter what tomorrow morning

that wren will mark the day

with its voice, with its song

though one in three hundred billion

the world weeps

as we lose our sense of value

priorities, authorities,

control issues with fathers

we play the game

hope to win

and still we never learn

is the price to pay for one happy family

that the whole world must be dead?

The wren, it knows its place

and who it is and thus it sings its song

Just as I know, one voice, one song,

one part of the melody is mine

and I am a hope bringer, a joy singer

a love sharer

and I will sing my song.