I'm Only Human

Why when someone says humans
all we look for is the vile?
as if God didn't have a plan
when he gave us a will we could defile
why do they always say I'm only human
when being human isn't an excuse?
when God formed us and life began
he knew a will also offers love and truce
what if we instead brought to mind
the image of men pulling other out of fires
as the definition of humankind
fireflies, sun on your skin, smiles, and church choirs
I would rather thing we are rolling waves
instead of the hurricanes we could be
there is so much beauty in the blue to save
for we are compassionate yet relentlessly free
we are everything and nothing wrapped up into one
we are a speck of dust floating oblivious in the universe
we are snow banks, red kites, and cradling your grandson
forever we are the greatest blessing and the curse
we may be very small
but sometimes the smallest things are most precious
we may hate and we may brawl
but even roses have thorns on their bushes
so remember that being part of humanity
is the greatest honor and also the greatest pain
when you realize that seeing the good in humans is the key
to learning to love, so that hate can then wane.


-anna sluder

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Time present time

I stand on my toes, on a box, on top of a wheeled chair to reach the clock high above me, so that I can cut the whiskers of it off with a pair of gardening scissors. But I hear a knock at the door and it is present standing in the way holding a fish, she hands it to me, so I ask her what to do with it, she tells me she knows that everything the birds say really matters to me that she knows that I count and store every breath that the trees release, in an empty peanut butter jar under my bed, but that I could not remember my first cold water, there was no recollection of my first bright moon. She tells me to hold the fish and decide what it means to me in terms of love, so that I will remember when I leave this room, and when I go to sleep, that I once loved something new, and small, and grey, and something that had scales and looked nothing like me, and I didn’t know where it came from or where it would go from there, but that that di
Read more

Green

I stand in the door wanting nothing, but to be a part of the little house we built of medium-rare earth and broken eggshells and wriggly worms, the bedroom walls are green and there is a single thought tactfully pinned to its center. I remember that everything is quieter in green, and to find solace in the silent ecstasy of the earth’s preeminent color, to excavate and toss away all the colors until we reach the obvious, that green is the walls, and green is earth, and earth reclaims buildings slowly over time with moss then ivy, then as the buildings dilapidate and become their own graves in gardens of decay, it swallows them whole, like swamps and quicksand I thought would play a much larger role in my girlhood battles than they did. I want to crawl inside of the little house we built and play in the dirt with the worms, I want to be reclaimed by terra cotta clay and tunnels made by ants, and if I need to, I’ll send a note to the green,
Read more

The Only Future I See

I am afraid to make today my home, I am afraid to buy pillows in the comfort of this moment, so I try to imagine the future, I like to think that it is a road lined with flowers in the colors of my youth, but there are no flowers, I don’t even think that if there is a road, it is lined with commas. When I dare my mind to try to imagine the future, I only see myself, no bills, no house, no job, no person, no plan, just myself standing in a field of baby green ampersands, cutting my hair and then holding a small bird, and the bird doesn’t sing for me,  as I promised I would never ask it to, it just stays alive beside me. So most days we break apart plums with our fingers like stories, and we make each day, each plum our home, and we are perfect and we are whole in this interval of quiet, where the sun is the only one who gets to see. -anna sluder
Read more