Relativity

  
Relativity
 
When right and wrong have been confused,
What hope is left for rectitude?
Our emperors have ethics low –
And this, our species tolerates.
The top is rotten, that we know –
But can we live with rot below?
   
We watch, in safety, from afar,
The horrors of a distant war.
It fascinates and titillates,
But when it reaches where we are,
Do we react as humans should,
Who plainest truth, till then, refused?
      
How easily we judge one, who
We haven’t met or listened to.
And even when we have, we let
Our prejudice obscure the facts.
Yet if we’re wrong, with scant regret,
Our errors, kindly, we forget.
 
We string a story line, with which
We weave a fantasy that’s rich.
This gives us rationales for acts
That only served to scratch an itch.
And having woven so, we view
That narrative as “I” or “you”.
  
2014 January 30th, Thu.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn