You loved her in the womb,
Until you saw her face,
Then you decided she was an ugly baby,
You loved the story until you saw the person,
Then you decided you don’t believe them,
Because of their Race.
You wanted them teaching your children,
Until you saw their sexuality,
Their appearance their beliefs their eyes.
You loved them until you saw who they love
And how they choose who and how to love,
Then you decided they weren’t worth hearing.

You decided that they Are crazy.
You decided that they belong in a box,
Because we know “how to deal with people like them
How to fix people like them”.
But what you don’t do is listen.
You are so quick to change your opinion,
When you judge with your eyes.

You are so quick to tell call them worthless,
And to say, “YOU’RE FIRED”,
For believing something you didn’t.
You are so quick to ostracize them, to hate them,
To say that something is wrong with them.
Because you judge with your Eyes,
And forgot your heart.

Copyright Ashley Marlow ©

Vagueness encircled
Fragmented aspiration!
Vagueness crafted
Fadeout the dream of living!
Vagueness designed
Slaughter the humanity!
Vagueness contrived
Maneuver division!
Vagueness persuaded
Project masculinity!
Vagueness indorsed
Homicide creation.

So disappointing
what my windows
to the weary world see
i blink
and i blink some more
trying to clear
the melancholy mist
holding back
an ocean of tears
i try not casting stones
the only stone
i should be throwing
is the callous heart
barely beating
in my ice chest
i need to throw it back
in the pool
of humanity
watch the ripples
reach shallow shores
where integrity drowns
in high tides
of unsound rest
may these undulating motions
stirring small waves of love
penetrate walls of indifference
overcome all barriers
brothers and sisters all
gathering arm in arm
arriving at our destination
full of hope...

~Steven

Into you

learning to be
a divided
submersible

once so perimetric
on the fringe
of all that grows within

we thus fall
and settle
much like Sarajevo Roses

colorfully resting
in the lasting drawn out
places we made perish

now
here
am I

into you

the ******
connective
entirely dependent

upon
the quotient
of two integers

the way we love
is a method
of mixed results

Beware ancient grudge
Either the red or the blue
It is all purple

where are the times
when people could rely
     more or less
on what their leaders
     whom they had elected
spoke and did?

when there was yet no need
to fact-check every other sentence
of presidential self-appraisals
or denigrating tweets about opponents?

after three years of suffering
through all shenanigans of the most blatant kind
it seems that rudeness, ignorance, and lies
have quietly become accepted as new normal

we've learned that people we elected
     to fight for our cause
can say one thing
     and then the opposite
throw in a lie or two
and nobody complains
or votes them out of their coveted offices

in fact
thanks to the wonderful examples of our leaders
we now have learned to distrust everybody
even ourselves

eight billion plus of unreliables