Culturally Tranmitted Diseases

In some mnemonic slide show still imprinted on

the seventh grade lobe of my expanding

universe float images of herpes, syphilis and HIV and

all of the coccuses that might infect my future

choices, the STDs that lurk in microscopic condemnation
          (of lust, or love, or lack) and menace my Caucasian
will.  But in my current static, plastic world, wherein thoughts
bend and shift to dopplered colors, Blue and Red and Black and White,

at last I see a pattern in the splattered blood of races.  At

last I see how cultures, myths and misbegotten memes lead us

toward the hasty unconsidered views and hate-infected hues away from

Unity.

So easy are the hard beliefs of Them and

Those, and Us and These.  So simple then to nurse disease, to suckle

armored, spiked, misapprehended motives, blaming, outward-aiming

thoughts that sit, like fear, to

rust through heartfelt knowing of the wells of our shared fountain.

In these ironclad and necrophilic notions
          (of foes, or friends, or Fates) our emotions breach the angry clouds and

rainfall fills the tracks where tears have spilled, and blood;

under the imperatives of generations, transmitting thought-viruses through

Time in waves and wars
and when will we learn to wash the members of our

naked minds and desegregate our over-taxonomic
hearts?  When we remember our relatedselves, then, at last, we 

Heal.