Hatred and Meditation

Do I hate?

Do I use the word correctly?

Do I respect its insurrection on rationality?

 

Do I feel the emotion expressly revealed

through introspection?

Is hate’s searing devotion the lesson that seals

our soul’s subjection?

 

I hate potato salad.

I hate country western ballads.

 

I hated sweet potato

but I ate it when grandma said so.

 

I hate vapid pop music;

I rate it invalid acoustics.

 

I hated when daddy hit momma

when they hated the trauma of hate

that made strangers out of lovers,

dispirited hate externally creating

the hate from within.

 

I hate butterscotch,

and yes, I hate pop-rocks,

and yes, I hate culture shock,

displacement while vultures flock

 

I hated bullies, and

I hate being bullied.

 

I hated bullies who bullied me.

 

I hated having to fight them

for the right to subsist.

 

I hated fighting bullies

so the fight in the next bully

would cease to exist.

 

I hated fighting

for the sake of fighting.

 

I hated lightning and thunder

of fists rendering flesh asunder,

my knuckles knuckling under

my hated fate.

 

I hate being marginalized.

I despise being patronized.

 

I surmise that I hate that surprising

ill-advised, revised

hand-waving

of genocide of the natives.

 

I hated being born fated

as a second-rated citizen

in my nation, born from hate,

fear, and superstition.

 

I hated suspension of disbelief

in reality offering no relief

in fostering only grief and suffering.

 

I hated my place in the universe.

 

I hated the racial fight

in the perverse plight

to maintain the right to exist even

as second-rated civilian.

 

I hate that I relate to privilege

from the bottom of a boot heel.

My hate in its sacrilege

is throttled by acute appeal.

 

Is it hate

that makes me try to avoid hatred?

 

There are many who hate

that makes them try to destroy

what they hated.

 

I know we don’t hate the same

or mean the same thing

when we endure hatred.

 

I want to eradicate

the lame machine of pain

screaming of pure conflated abhorrence

that makes one man crush another

for discovering differences.

 

We all suffer.

 

Do I hate?

Do I verb it correctly?

Should I select an interjection

with less lethality?

 

Can I kill an emotion that exists

to make people kill?

Can we fill a devotion that persists

as a poison pill?

 

Why do we hate?

It’s self-rot

Can I ever relate?

I hope not.

***

NOTE: If you are offended by the image above, the words in this poem, the embedded video, but feel nothing about the riots, hatred, and violence that took place yesterday in Charlottesville, then you need to do some soul-searching. I am sickened and deeply saddened by what we have become as a nation.