red ice

Don't tell me I'm great and that everything is ok.
You don't tell me that without your own agenda--
Patronizing me like you're creating me;
feeling the warmth for yourself after thinking you tucked it around me.
But I'm not warm by you
or anyone who thinks they own me through charity.
I'm the owner of fireless sticks
I'm lashing into rafts.
You too would look sour at the gentleman
who looks down upon my pile of sticks,
then smiling with pity discards his cigar
into the wood for igniting.
And thinking he's done his good turn,
turns away
with fake warmth in his heart.
He might as well have sprinkled salt in a fish bowl
for thinking the goldfish in search of the sea.
And what a grotesque thing
for the gentleman to turn away smug
with his virtue, with his selfish gratification at being selfless,
while the fish chokes in his last drink.
You burnt my sticks to ash,
But the blaze you saw in my eyes
was not warmth and blessings piled up in store for you.
It was coldness and ire--
red ice
for the gentlepeople who won't think like a fish,
who won't think like a man building rafts,
who won't think like the child in the ghetto,
who won't think like the man addicted,
who won't think like the prostitute in debt,
who won't think like the younger or the older or the other who is different,
who won't think like anyone else.
How lonely never to think when giving.
And can you really be giving when your ultimate goal
is to feel good from it?
Feeling good is a by-product
when the product is good.
But the raft is burnt and the fish is dead!
Will you turn to look?
Or do you fear what you might see?
or how it might make you feel?
But if you think too much you might be a hypocrite,
so don't think too much.
Your conscience can't get you if you keep it ignorant.