Seeing Red OR Human Nature, Parts found Wanting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Every year life dishes us our highs and lows, successes and failures, fun times and sad times. In no time (or so it often seems) another year will be stretching ahead from Day One. We can but promise ourselves and each other to do our best to make sure it is a better, kinder year...

As for making dreams come true (don’t we all have them?) it has been my experience, on the more promising occasions to which life has treated me now and then, that we may be pleasantly surprised how close we can get just by trying. 

The great thing about Sandmen is that they never discriminate; we can be rich or poor, gay or straight, super fit or severely disabled, from any country in the world...whatever...and they don't prejudge us for any of that,  just as it should be among human beings…

Me? Oh, I’m just one among millions of dreamers out there who hold the world as it could, would, and should be in the palms of our hands. [Slippery things, though, dreams, like good intentions...]

This poem is a villanelle.

SEEING RED or HUMAN NATURE, PARTS FOUND WANTING

A few dreams down, more ahead,

(but haven’t we all been here before?)

humanity (yet again) left seeing red

Integrity as unevenly spread

as ever across the world’s political floor;

a few dreams down, more ahead;

Mutual respect so thinly spread

among this world’s religions’ harder core;

humanity (yet again) left seeing red

Nations’ survivors bury their dead,

the injured left knocking at Heaven’s door;

a few dreams down, more ahead;

A better world, our forefathers said,

that’s what our blood and tears are shed for;

humanity (yet again) left seeing red

A kinder world would bow its head,

seeing fair Progress farmed out for a whore;

a few dreams down, more ahead;
humanity (yet again) left seeing red

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012