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| (Image from Beyond The Stereotype) |
To Love Your Fellow Men
(Or "It Isn't Christlike To Love Your Fellow Men")
You and I at twelve,
holding one another;
looking for ourselves—
searching through each other.
You and I embraced
behind a bolted door,
chancing a lapse from Grace
for wanting to explore.
You and I desired
expression beneath a quilt
of thoughts brought to fire
that smoldered us in guilt.
You and I, my friend,
rehearsing to a tune,
moved in me again,
which I’m now dancing to.
__________
Strange how pain matures
and hate begins to breed,
till breathing needs a cure,
till death’s a remedy.
I would heed the men
who damn the ‘godless souls’
and cry, “To hell with them!”
when I was one of ‘those.’
Though they think their words
quote solely deity,
the only voice they’ve heard
comes from their misery.
So, I’ve declined their life,
which tells me where I’ll end,
since it isn’t Christ-like
to love your fellow men.
__________
You and I have kept
our scars discreet and these
wounds that haven’t wept
can only make you bleed.
You and I were taught
to cede our inner-selves,
suffer not our thoughts
and veil our anguish well.
You and I aren’t flesh
to fertilize the wheat,
as a life lived for death
won’t seed you soul to peace.
You and I, dear friend,
needn’t leave our ending
to a breath that’s spent
fearing breath we’re spending.
-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., Small All White in the Forest)
"I am no barrier to its sun; the light and I are as one!"
My Poetic Notes:
The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: This poem took me a long time to write!
You see, I tried to challenge myself to write a really powerful poem about a very difficult topic for me: my childhood best friend Tim and I exploring our homosexuality together from behind "The Zion Curtain" of our upbringing in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("The Mormon Church").
And this poem was also published on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blog (please see the hyperlink below for the blog), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message that I am trying to convey through "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer."
This poem was written in Salt Lake City, Utah.
-Paulee
https://paulwhitingwriting.blogspot.com
This "Small All White in the Forest" Post No. 036 was edited on September 19th, 2023.
"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]
