Here be poetry
	Lynette Shaw McKone  Index of poetry on this site  Links to some of my other stuff  Here be Poetry!  More poems!  And more poems  Even more poems  Yet more poems  Poetry, again!  Not more poetry?  Oh,no!  Last page!		LISTEN TO ME I didn’t listen when you spoke to me I didn’t know who your were or where you were from I thought your voice was the wind Thundering through my soul Why didn’t you show yourself and let me see Who you were I may have listened more I didn’t listen when you spoke to me I thought I would always be alone Fighting by myself For myself A prisoner of selfishness How can you set me free? And show me the way to be a better person I didn’t listen when you spoke to me I wonder how you feel when you are ignored While you speak to thousands And no one listens Do you long also, to be free When you are encapsulated in words or art A prisoner on a page or a canvas Does it tear at your heart? Do you wish to be who you are not? To live out a mortal life To lay down the burden of a million screaming souls Life would be so much easier if you would show yourself But proof denies belief And, who would believe that you were who you claimed to be In this time of delusion, when things are claimed all the time No one listens, no one knows, perhaps no one cares If only you would give us undeniable proof And show us unbelievers the way No one can see you, or prove you exist So, how do we know you listen when we pray? THE WINDS OF CHANGE The winds of change blow gently across our bow as we set sail on the ocean of optimism In search of the place where peace and harmony blossom where death and destruction wither and segregation has never bloomed Our sails are filled with the soft breath of hope We are guided by the starlight of love and protected by the hand of understanding SCAREDY CAT, SCAREDY CAT... ...what you think you’re looking at? Nothing, I’m looking at nothing. I am scared to watch the news on television, I am afraid to read the daily papers, I no longer listen to the radio, I sit in my 200 year old cottage surrounded by familiar things; Photographs of my children and grand-children With my books and medicine for my ills. With clean water in the taps and heat from the fire and a warm bed. Safe and smug and hiding and denying and frightened. This house of mine has never known war. It has never known poverty. It has never been afraid, and I draw a little comfort from those things. I try desperately not to think of other women and their children, for then I must think about them, and that I cannot do. From my cocoon of warmth and safety I pretend that all the war and pain is nothing to do with me. I didn’t start it. I cannot help. I don’t care. But, I do care, and that is why I am afraid. Because I don’t know how to care I can write like this but it wont change anything. I have no money to send. I have no weapons for their fight. I have no way of sending food. I have no way to care. Because, I am afraid of what might happen. Who should I write letters of support to, who will read them? If I could send money, who do I send it to? How do I know which side is right or wrong? Should I care more for children in Iraq than I do for children in Iran? More for Christian children than Muslim children? More for Catholic children than Protestant children? I don’t know which children to care for. And if I care for them all wont that cancel out one against the other? Does that make it okay to do nothing, nothing at all? Except to sit in my house in silence, Desperately not listening to the cries, and the screams, and the suffering. And thinking that, maybe, tomorrow I will do something, if I can overcome my fear. Stop being a scaredy cat.