UNLEARNING THE VIOLENCE
Blood thirsty hands
have long been the generational curse
we keep inheriting from
those that came before us.
We were born with the rage of our forefathers running in our blood-
even long after they’ve perished,
the air around us is still thick
with their hunger for vengeance,
the battles they fought and lost,
the ghost of their grief lingers over us
and makes violence into an acceptable language- a way of life, so we begin to speak to each other with profanities, carrying on ancestral grudges from generation to generation,
teaching children that if someone speaks a different dialect, they are a foe-
if their skin is that color/tone, you can’t be acquainted with them, they belong to the lineage of traitors – they’re the inferior ones,
and then it even escalates from verbal to weapons- guns and machetes,
wars, genocides, massacres—
millions of innocent lives sabotaged
because that’s what we’ve been taught,
that diversity is a conflict, a threat–
but weren’t we supposed to be each other’s keepers?
At the heart of life’s reality, unclothed, all our differences put aside,
We’re all simply human,
and yet here we are picking on each other,
sowing shame and guilt
for differences we have no power over!
Don’t we all want a peaceful world?
Then, why not unlearn the violence?
We have the power it takes
to be the generation that puts a foot down
and builds a new world
that knows only so little about bloodshed,
but so much about harmony and togetherness.
Let’s join hands and break the shackles of the generational curse!
Together we can unlearn the violence!
The road to peace is long, and winding, and rocky
but its destination is not impossible
to arrive at if we try!
~LEON INKSMITTEN
