An Epistle to the Downtrodden

Kerry, over at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, offered a challenge mid-week (I am behind, as always): to write an epistle, a letter of sorts addressed to whomever we choose. Some amazing entries have been offered by fellow poets. Please do click on the link to check them out. Mine is a more humble effort. In the middle of the night I woke up and suddenly knew who I would address my missive to. It makes for some very long sentences, and I didn't know how to remedy that - I just wrote it down as it came. Apparently, I have deep feelings about the disenfranchised :-) Images are of Vancouver's East Side, taken from google.

I am also linking to Poetry Jam, whose challenge this week is: Occupy.

To the supposed Misfits and Outcasts of the World,

brave enough to be

who you really are, judged for being different,

rejected for circumstance,

or appearance

which doesn't fit the perceived
plastic bubble
of what our crazy world considers beauty,
or for mental illness
which really just means
you are attuned to a higher
(and truer) frequency
than we more limited beings can hear,
take heart, for
in the Old Ways,
you were considered
the tribe's magic person,
your utterances heeded with respect.

You seekers and speakers of truth,
you downtrodden,
who burn with the spark of humanity,
offering your true smiles to others
even as you struggle,
looking at us out of your honest eyes,
you who have nothing to hide
and don't know the word for facade,
wanting only to be acknowledged
as a fellow human being
of worth and value,
know that, by some of us,
you are seen.

You, the oppressed, marginalized, disdained,
your poverty causing many to
avert their eyes in discomfort,
you, who pass the ringers of the little bells
collecting money which may, one day,
feed you a meal,
while all around you
people pass by
with their loaded shopping carts,
merrily loading bags and boxes
into their SUV's,
while you think of your children at home,
in chilly rooms with an empty fridge,
remember that your children
have your love and devotion,
worth more than a hundred SUV's
in the grand scheme of things.

Dear fellow being,
know that you have already found
the truth of authenticity
the rest of us are seeking,
know that you are heroic
in your daily putting of one foot in front of the other,
for keeping on keeping on,
that you are worthy and needed in this world,
that your struggle is seen, and noted,
and that, while it may not happen in this lifetime,
in the karmic turning
of the Wheel of Time,
whether as madman or prophet,
as a spokesman for the disenfranchised,
(but never as a CEO or corporate tax evader),
you will come back to this world
of disparity and urgent need,
once more glad to be here,
for life, in all its guises and disguises,
is beautiful.

As the great toppling monolith
of capitalism and commerce
slowly begins to buckle
you, my friends,
who have already learned
how to live richly, with little,
are the experts who are going,
one day, 
to show us the way.

You may feel invisible now,
your voices unheard,
but Believe!
The force of the small and common man
is beginning to rise all over the world,
throwing off the oppression
and manipulation of the mighty.

The tide of man will turn
and turn again,
until the mighty are fallen
and the way made new,
and then, fellow pilgrim,
what a world awaits us
when at last
we come into our inheritance
and Occupy Earth.