Remembering When Kindness Was in Fashion
by Michael Doyle

We live in a time of self-limited imagination
Where people cannot dream of outside creation
But mysteriously believe in writing only experience
Such as found in personal and depraved dalliances

Rather than dreaming of the bigger conceptions
Too afraid of the shadows found in the connections
This sort of closing down is a time for discerning
That these days might be the end to our learning

The plurality of America exceptionally forms its identity
Taking its individual strands and becoming its unity
It can be bewildering to be bulldozed by deep history
While too many stumble past things of pure orthodoxy

Believing that any sort of change is automatically progress
Even when, truth be known, authoritarianism is only regress
The tribes of America too often forget about what it is to think
While society vigorously edges closer into the abysmal brink

Compassion and moral courage have steadily declined
As a culture of hate has become all the more refined
People of all stripes need to learn to hold back again
And to approach responses as if responding to a friend

Because too often even friends forget who they are
And the things and thinks said are taken way too far
It's funny in a peculiar sense as some have confided
Pointing with pride that they believe this one-sided

But the truth needs to be known that each side is appalling
With its attacks and counter-attacks of shock and awing 
Literature should be about the direct coarseness  in life
Not just about that which brings peace, but also strife

Today, the stories that need most to be ones freely told
Are those that cause us to think and act as if bold
To love and to liberate, while we debate with compassion
Being strong, yet remembering when kindness was in fashion

(c) October 5, 2023   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved