lack of empathy poems

You Don’t Get That | Tara Lynn Hawk

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Your own street number, front door, gate, garden
View of something other than piled trash, dark alley
A sanctuary, a nest, a home
No
You don’t get that
Room to stretch out, companionship of a cat
Freedom from fear at 2 a.m.
You don’t get that
You are here to cook our burgers, clean our floors
Shelve our groceries
We need you in a constant state of want and desire
It’s good for you, gives you something to aspire to
Work harder, be thrifty, do not drink
You should’ve stayed in school
Should’ve never fallen in love, had that baby
Dared to dream
Should’ve listened, done what you were told
Maintained your subservience
It’s your own damn fault, because now
You don’t get that

More at https://www.taralynnhawk.com/. Her chapbook of poetry, “The Dead” is available on Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/736913.

When the City Speaks | Allison Grayhurst

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It is no small place
this devil’s field
where leopard’s blood
runs through the streets
like a constellation
cut from the sky.
Drunkards, drug pushers,
the cold amoebas that
die without seeing a dawn.
In Chinatown, the spell is
set loose, splitting
sidewalks with fury.
Waxen murderers, a barnyard
of devourers.
Inside,
lovers tremble,
clutched tightly together,
sensual and desperate,
anaesthetized by passion,
by common fear
of the cruel madness
that pounds and pursues
just outside their door,
where all
will never be
well nor
free.

Alligator in a Suit | JD DeHart

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There he stands, the pristine
scaled skin glowing in the sun,
the flat mouth opening and closing,
rows and rows of teeth,
molar cufflinks, and a killer
smile while he does his daily work.
More at https://jddehartfeaturepoems.blogspot.com.

To the Next-Door Neighbor | Catherine B. Krause

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I’m glad you think I’m pretty
and I really did like
the little ceramic cup with my name on it,
but you voted to zap me straight and cis,
deport the scared closeted trans girl
with no memory of the country she was born in,
take away our health care,
send the harmless theology student in Ohio
who loved to talk Semitic linguistics
and the guy down the street who hosted the car wash
for the Red Cross the Sunday after 9/11
into a war zone of America’s creation
that your vote has only worsened,
and enable a confessed sexual predator
who thinks it’s me and the people I love
who shouldn’t be allowed in public restrooms,
so you can love the sinner from a distance.

Resist | Judy Moskowitz

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Down the back street
To a back door
Background noise
A deflection
Artificial plants that look as real
As false eyelashes
Valuable as liquid gold
Integrated with authenticity
Rich chocolate dripping out of fountains
Surrounded by all of that
It’s hard to resist
Until the pressure cooker explodes
Into a mushroom cloud
Bleeding out
Nothing is left
Not even the fat
And so it goes

Crudus Brutus | JD DeHart

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Never missing an opportunity
to poke fun
inflate ego
rant, rave, ridicule
pretend to stand
a little taller

Grabbing the club
resorting to violence
when a kind word
a meditative thought

would do quite nicely
instead.

Step into My Shoes | Marsha Owens

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…he writes on the cell floor,
all to say, “tread on me
then hear
my whisper
caress this cell,
then feel my heart
beat, forgotten
kids wrapped in razor
wire in this pipeline
from school to prison
scream into the night.”

He scribbles “I’m scared,”
then writes his story entitled
“The End.”

(Art 180 in Richmond, Virginia encourages incarcerated youth to find expression through the arts. Virginia refers more youth to law enforcement than any other state. NPR News, 2016)

Legacy | Carl Wade Thompson

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Let’s talk about legacy,
your legacy Mr. President.
A Peace Prize to your name,
you dealt death in foreign lands.
Pakistan has fond memories,
they are sure to have.
Over 900 innocents killed—accidently.
Another 100 civilians in Yemen.
400 in Somalia,
180 in Afghanistan.
Let’s not mention the children,
that’s a real bummer.
So when your library is built,
let their ghosts haunt it.
Because the dead will remember,
Their memory will judge you.
No pomp, no circumstance,
their blood is on your hands.
Just another killer in the fold,
let the dead speak.

Animal Love | Ananya S. Guha

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The mildness of this winter
Has surprised weather-beaten
People
The cold is yet to come they say
But those distant hills shiver at night
The dog stands absorbing the cold
We don’t
But with every season
We brew coldness in hearts
We store it in the many
Myths we propagate about human
Love.
Animal love we forget.

Bristles | JD DeHart

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Creature with an underside
made of moving parts,
bristles make patterns in sand
spelling words only animals
know, we sell their shallow
outlines in shops, ringing bells
signaling our entrance, a quick
swipe and we can take one home
without an idea of how it looks
when living and mobile.

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