just kind in poetry

every moment there is joy and horror and
beauty and tedium and love and sleep and
eating and confusion and want and pain
and ecstasy happening all over the world
in the various nodes of human experience
you are only one of the billions of them

it is so much easier to hurt than it is
to help or to heal, a few unkind words or
an trigger finger, there’s nothing easier
malice proves nothing about your potency
that’s all just cruelty-laced laziness
for real proof of mettle, try to be kind

tell the stories you needed when you were young
or hurt or empty and you needed them so badly
but they weren’t there, so go make that art
so go write that novel, so go sing that song
you are the only person in the world interested
in the story of how your life should have gone
but the story of the life you really lived though
you will be surprised the comfort some might find
do the thing you needed back then because there’s
millions feeling that pain right at this moment

that rich ambiguity, our evasion of fast definition
these are the things that infuse us and that bind us
liminal beings are we, not all these crude binaries
you must feel all the indefinabilities around you
between you and him and her and me and everything
we need psychopomps, not guiding the living to death
rather guiding us past the boundaries we think exist
that cause us to fear, to hate, to destroy each other
you think Styx splits life from death but underneath
underneath the water, the riverbed’s the same land
as on both sides of that great divide, continuous

remember: you are broken and you are amazing
don’t get it mixed up, though
you’re not broken because you’re amazing
you’re not amazing because you’re broken
you’re just independently both
you will always be both
embrace it all, stop pretending there are
imaginary lines defining identities that
were never really there to begin with
move forward in the embrace of love
help each other shine
tell each other it’s okay
it’s okay either way
it’s okay both ways
be kind and shine