Tim Labbe - Cowards

You don’t understand
poetry or poets,
youth or age…,
walks in the rain,
the scent of lilacs
in the springtime,
sparklers and fireflies
or the gauntlet of
ignorance an elderly
faceless black woman
endured throughout
every season of
her life

You don’t know the stress
of being hungry, poor,
abandoned …
And never
could you feel
the choice a woman
must make after
being raped
or told the fetus
will be severely
disabled at birth

How could
you possibly
unclench the
the naïve fists, if
you could never
relate to cowering eyes
or suppressed tears
caused by heinous
abuses too disturbing
to imagine

Words are weak,
poems useless.

Your cowardly conscience
will forever be void of
guilt, shame or knowledge,
if you never peel
away the thick scab
of intentional gullibility

You don’t understand,
because you choose not to.

And we all suffer alone.

Tim Labbe

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cowards-5/