I Would Be Evil
A poem
I would be you I would be them If I had your life Their life What choice would I have In the face of life's forces? Born into their world With their parents Their environment Their circumstances Their massive vulnerabilities And, oh, the gargantuan pressures Of this wild world Shaping them to be What they are And what they are to become I would be the impatient The kind The agitated The peaceful The angry, annoyed The violent The caring and joyful The saint And the sinner I am not a bad person I am not a good person I am a person Liable to be cast As anyone or anything Capable of any extreme And any between I have seen only some of the ways That I can hurt And that I can heal When it is my turn I would have to play any role Over a long enough eternity With every possible permutation It is mathematically inevitable That I would have to play every role Which means one I don’t want Could be now Or next Just as there is no escaping a body's death There is no escaping a life I would be like a figure of wholeness Like a Buddha, a Christ I would be average Joe And I would be what I'm so glad to not be right now What horrifies to imagine Playing out the darkest character Of the darkest depths As much as I wish I and my ego Could claim total purity Immunity to any evil, any fault I can't After dancing with the Devil I know it can get me off balance Especially when I am too alone Without a helping hand Even after initiation through hell No matter how much I may meditate Worship the right symbol Or try to cultivate some highest virtue Expecting me Or anyone To be able to withstand and resist The forces that have overtaken and illed entire societies For millennia Is like expecting me to stand on the beach As a ten thousand meter tsunami crashes over Destroying everything on the shore And be completely unmoved Still standing in the same exact place Undisturbed When the wave goes back to the sea Instead of being completely overwhelmed Washed away Because of the incomprehensible power That just crashed over me Destroying everything in sight If I am ever that disconnected Unimpacted by what life brings When life brings it Please kill me For I would actually already be dead With no chance To be danced along with the waves I am man But I am not man-made I am life-made Not self-made My cleverest tricks Are only so powerful No matter how special I think I would be Under the right circumstances It is inevitable: My soul would still get taken over Swallowed up By any powers of the world In any vector Any of the loves And any of the evils If I were left in the dark I would be that criminal A mass murderer A genocidal psychopath Without enough conscience To even hope or pray That something or someone Could help me see my way free If you are so pure and good Righteous and mighty Crystal clear Maybe you can teach me? But, honestly? I don't buy it I've seen too many wakes caused By those masquerading as pure light Blinded and blinding To their potential to harm If you truly believe "Oh, I would never be or do evil like that Any evil at all, even I'm just a good person" Please stay away from me You’re missing the picture Defrauded of what and who you really are And how much more powerful The forces of life are Than a delusional self-conception Have some fucking respect for life For those who drew the short straw this time It could be you next Would you like compassion afforded to you then? If you can't give it to them now To those playing out these most unfortunate roles and reflections To hopefully wake us the fuck up To the reality of our situation Who's going to give it to you When you need it? At least you, hopefully But maybe don’t count on being better at giving it to them Than you are at giving it to yourself and others now When you allegedly have the benefits Of being so supposedly good already Who are 'you' really To want compassion from others When you’re playing the dark When you can’t conjure it for them? Evil is not resolved by throwing it in prison Trying to forget it Ignore it By fighting or hating it It is resolved by facing it Seeing it And taking care of it Whatever that calls for If you can't manage more than dismissal Contemptful disgust That you should have to be involved Or denial that it even exists In some perfect little delusional world We will go nowhere we want to go Fast Part of being All Of It Means our character being vulnerable and susceptible To the dark Being All Of It Unfortunately for the preferred self image Of pure and only goodness Means recognizing our fingerprints At the scene of the crime Seeing how we have a hand in our life All Of It Doesn't exclude evil There is great news About having compassion For evil 'out there' As it expands compassion for what you learned To most hate That you don't even realize you learned to hate And learned to ignore That you don't even realize you learned to ignore About yourself And I can see nothing that we need more Than some motherfucking compassion For all that we’d prefer to ignore For what we really did not know That we were doing For everyone On all ‘sides’ of our inseparability Of this great misunderstanding This divine tragic comedy This weirdest womb This mysteriously different world Than we thought Which we have found ourselves Waking up in And to