Madness Has No Holiday Spirit

Our holidays here are no guarantee

That sadness and suffering will not pay a visit

To some part of this mixed-up world.

It's incomprehensible. Tell me, what is it

 

That drives killers to massacre children

At a school in Pakistan? Can't we expect

Our schools to provide a haven of safety

That murder and violence cannot infect?

 

Two years ago at Sandy Hook

A slaughter occurred for a different reason.

Madness cruelly and completely ignores

The spirit of any holiday season.

 

The mind obsessed with revenge is dangerous--

So is the mind poisoned with rules,

Haughty morals and warped "truths"

That cater a dastardly feast for fools.

 

Does irrationality rule the world?

Explanations seem a futility.

Kindness, goodness, and fairness must balance

With crazed minds and hateful hostility.

 

Safety itself is an illusion--

A wished-for notion; a deceptive disguise;

A mental construct that placates the hopeful,

Tricks the unwary, deludes the unwise.

 

When religion stifles and doesn't expand

And open the seeker's heart and mind,

The world becomes a hollow place--

Scary and threatening, cold and unkind.

(12-17-14)