Tag Archives: ignorant

Lives Lost

Lives lost–statistics–

Death scrolls on the news ticker,

We can’t feel their pain.

Vaccinated from the world

We live in ignorant bliss.

Do we really care?

Our own are an afterthought

In our decade wars.

How truly cold we’ve become

Trading life for apathy.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

‘Tis More Dangerous Than Any Weapon Created By Man

‘Tis more dangerous than any weapon created by man,

Born of spirit and Heaven’s hand.

Free to be opened and enjoyed like fine wine,

Or corked up and saved for another time.

In anger it rages and wishes to impart harm,

Praying before action that reason sounds alarm.

Planning and scheming are some of what it does best,

Running through scenarios, putting them to the test.

At times acting irrational as in the case of lust or love,

Acting without thinking giving primal urge a shove.

Evil when plagued with illness deprived of right or wrong,

Difficult to cure lasting the whole life long.

It’s never been more dangerous than when behind a wall of brick,

Ignorance and jealousy and hatred make it sick.

Closing off one’s mind is a terrible and awful waste,

Something that should be frowned upon as a sheer and utter disgrace.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

Prompt: Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie – Photo Challenge #16 – “Portrait”

 

Gabriel Neffke

Gabriel Neffke

 

I Never Really Knew Her

My breath floated silently toward Heaven.

I watched as it disappeared

Blending seamlessly with the cloud filled sky.

With upturned collar

I stood with loved ones feeling completely alone;

Such a strange feeling this is.

I had known her for almost fifty years,

But suddenly came to realize…

I scarcely knew her at all.

Self-absorbed with my life, my own family,

Thinking she would always be there

I never thought to ask who she was,

What her life was like,

Even where she born;

It just never occurred to me to ask

And never came up in conversation.

My picture of her had always been the same,

White hair, as white as newly fallen snow,

Her cheek, soft and smooth to the kiss,

Kind and joyful, yet quiet as a mouse;

Always taking a backseat to the love of her life.

Sadly, her time has now passed

Taking with it the story that was her.

I am left to gather up snippets,

Like those tossed on the cutting room floor

Selectively shared second hand.

My chance has passed to hear her story

In the truth that can only come from living it.

No fault can be placed, but on me

So on me alone the fault must lie.

By divine retribution, I stand here,

In the icy chill of winter to bid farewell

To one I loved dearly,

More dearly than she would ever know

And with profound sadness I’ve come to realize

…That I never really knew her at all.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

Answers

Answers–sought after for a lifetime,

Ebbing and flowing,

Never concrete.

~

Arms outstretched,

We reach…reaching…

Still always just out of our grasp.

~

Ignorant, we think our quest has ended,

Circumstances change,

What once was gospel dissipates.

~

We think ourselves wise,

But mere fools are we,

Not knowing that we know nothing.

~

Time has proven our innocent arrogance,

Dumbfounded,

We lumber on.

~

Still this is not new to mankind,

As antiquity portends,

Locked in this eternal struggle.

~

In our end we may finally realize,

We are not so unlike those that came before,

Seeking, yet failing to understand what this all means.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Skinned Knees

Skinned knees

Blood red

Torn pants

Frayed rope belt

Too big for frail frame

~

Nails caked

Hands shake

Dirty hands

Utensils for eating

Food is scarce

~

Shirt ragged

Sleeves ripped

Buttons missing

Better than nothing

Shopped from trash

~

Face leather

Beard unshaven

Hair matted

No place to shower

Embarrassed by odor

~

Scrap cardboard

Help Me Please

Eyes pleading

Can you spare a dime

Will you spare a dollar

~

Looking away

He’s invisible

Just a bum

Remember his knees

He wounds like us

~

You pray to God

Recite His passages

Holier than thou

Looking down your nose

You detestable hypocrite

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Have and Have Not

You laud that all you have, you have earned

The blood and sweat of your toils payment

While covering the working poor and unemployed

With a blanket of hate and hypocrisy

Are not your hands outstretched

Collecting the tithe of the state

You are no different than those you so despise

It comes at no less a cost and is no less a handout

Than that received for the sustenance of life

Is sharpening your intellect from the pockets of the people

Somehow more noble than feeding children and the poor

You cry for the state to back down

While pickpocketing the very social programs

You so vehemently claim to detest

You hypocrite! You cannot have it both ways

You cannot suckle at the teats of mother state

While questioning that which she so graciously provides

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

Unwelcome To Our Shores

Burqa, Dashiki, headscarf, turban,

Clothing nor traditions should fear instill.

Forgetting we are children of the melting pot,

Sprawling roots of Sicily, Belfast, Juarez, Berlin,

Many smaller port-of-call,

Spat on by bigots,

Held in contempt.

Amnesia plagued memory lost their father’s land,

Nothing has been learned o’er these many years,

Only the quarry has changed,

The slurs, the stares, the vindictive wit,

Disparate but analogous,

Yet none-the-less degrading.

Unwelcoming the huddled masses with open arms,

Seeing terror in every foreign face,

Like fools believing the rhetoric,

Stereotyping and profiling,

Demonizing difference.

~

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~