trace of elements

When hope feels thin
and once again
we wake to headlines written in smoke,
we ask the same old question
in a newer, louder voice.

War.

What is it good for?

When the sky glows red in places we have never been,
and yet somehow it is our own horizon burning,
how do we handle it?
How do we keep our hearts from hardening
like clay left too long in the sun?

How do we love
when fear knocks louder than kindness?
How do we live
without becoming the frog in the slow boil,
adjusting to the heat
until we forget we are burning?

War.

I despise it.
Not in theory, not in textbooks,
but in the quiet rooms where mothers sit
staring at doors that will not open again.
In the folded flags.
In the boots that will not be worn.

War means tears in thousands of eyes.
It means a name carved into stone
where laughter should have been.
It means the young go first
while the old speak of strategy.

It’s always the old who lead us into wars.
It’s always the young who fall.

Look at what we have won
with saber and gun.
Look closely.
Is it worth the cost of a single child’s breath?

In the fields, the bodies burning.
The machine keeps turning.
Metal and money grind louder than prayer.
Hatred spreads like smoke through open windows.
It poisons minds until we forget
that the face across the border
is a mirror.

Have we come so far
from knowing
that the foe we strike
is us?

When have the war drums sounded
and lilies bloomed behind them?
When has blood fed the soil
and grown anything but grief?

Has there ever been a time for war?
A true time?
A sacred hour
when destroying the spiral of humanity
made it whole again?

When is it acceptable
to lay down love
and pick up power?

When is it right
to wound the soul
for a moment’s relief from fear?

Do we lay down arms?
Do we bare our naked breast
to the saber and the saw?
Or do we learn a different courage,
one that stands unarmed
and still refuses to hate?

What if I became
such a warrior of love
that when you came to burn down my being
you found only a mirror
and forgiveness?

Not weakness.
Not surrender.
But a refusal
to let your fire
become my flame.

Until basic human rights
are guaranteed to all,
without regard to race,
without regard to border,
without regard to who prays which way,
this is a war.

A war against hunger.
A war against injustice.
A war against the lie
that some lives are worth more than others.

But this war
is fought with open hands.
With policy and protest.
With bread and books.
With listening.
With love that does not flinch.

Suffering may be constant.
That does not mean
we must build monuments to it.

When will love be the language of war?
When will we strike
a soft blow
that breaks chains instead of bones?

When will we leave the sword
for the soul?

Maybe peace does not begin
in treaties signed under chandeliers.
Maybe it begins
when one heart refuses
to boil.

When one voice says,
no more.

When one person chooses
to see a brother
where they were told to see a threat.

War.

What is it good for?

If history is honest,
almost nothing.

But love,
stubborn and inconvenient,
is good for everything.

So we keep our hearts.
We keep them open.
We guard them not with walls
but with courage.

And even in the smoke,
even in the noise,
we choose to live
as if peace
is still possible.

Because it is.

~ Larson Langston