Damages

Sometimes I wonder how God can ever be so forgiving - at least for a wretch like me, because, I am white. I have persecuted (indirectly, to be sure) my fellow species of man: red, black, yellow, Jew, Muslim, you name it. If its not white, then its not right. Shame fills me like a balloon, I am bloated from a past of atrocities - sometimes I even think that white must be some kind of coded conspiracy for genocide, I wave the flag of surrender but what I'm really doing is counterattacking. Then, checkmate. Black versus white. A centuries old pasttime, my whiteness and you're different. For shame. I know I am not the one responsible. But I am. I wasnt there at your Holocaust or your Cherokee removal. But I was. I wasnt sympathetic then, my monochromatic mask standing over your funeral, but I am now. In tears, the blood is on my hands, the salt is in my wounds; your wounds. Our wounds. Nonetheless, my face still looks back in the mirror, assessing the damages. Will I burn in Hell for this? Should I? Probably. Guilty by association. And dont kid yourself, we're all associated with each other. A fellowship of physical body parts, maimed - two eyes, one now blind - two feet, one prosthetic - some of us have pacemakers, others have cold hearts of stone. Some hearts pulse iambic pentameter. I wish I could hide my face. Be an entirely different race. I am not like to rhyme, when I'm all but out of time. I'd walk three miles in someone's shoes, live their life, then outen the fuse of genocidal dynamite, I'd show the world wrong from right. And one day when, I'd look back on it when I am all but dead and gone, I hope to see just one small thing; I want to hear the whole world sing. IN ONE voice to surround the night, and resurrect the pure daylight, a human chorus will proclaim, "We love each other all the same."