Walls Of Bones And Blood

Until you are by law under suspicion
for your face, do not speak too proudly
of the need to obey any other law.

Until you are by law under threat
of becoming slave or slain for walking
your path your way, do not claim

that if you are doing nothing wrong,
you have nothing to worry about. This 
is not a tale of unlawful doing, but one of 

unlawful being; unless you have lived
where you are always at war, or where war
always simmers just under boiling, do not speak

so confidently of the need for restraint,
do not sternly scold broken windows
in a landscape where everyone’s a casualty

by definition. If you live where that
is not the case, you likely live 
in a fortress made of bones cemented with blood

and unless you can see your own bones and blood
in those walls, don’t scorn those who are sick  
of seeing their entire past, present, and future there,

and who then attempt to tear it all down.