The Veil that shrouds my eyes and distorts what I see
Is mostly translucent but opaque’s taking hold of me.
My binocular vision allows me to gauge depth
But no matter how I view some things I know my sight’s inept.
A pretty face atop a body that simply won’t quit
Has overbearing influence to scramble my wits.
I understand my response is but biology,
Momentarily mistake attraction as reality.
And the eyes that are connected to my frontal lobes?
Have lifetime of experience to which they’ve been exposed.
Though my vision may be faulty real problem’s with my brain;
Our minds can’t make heads or tails until we view a scene again.
Initial encounters of things beyond our ken
Taxes our brains to analyze till we make sense of them.
Lack of sophistication concerning what’s right before our eyes
Can sometimes ignite fight or flee, make us love or despise.
Being open-minded and exploring differing points of view
Is a trait I hold essential, not a weakness to eschew.
To understand perspective we must tamp down natural urge
To reject foreign postulates and let others be heard.
Those that fear civil discourse and reject out of sorts
Ideas they find abhorrent and in tyranny rejoice?
When we mistake listening and comprehending
For capitulation? We get ignorance that’s never ending.
No other way save violence to move our fellow man
If we refuse to listen and each other understand.
Rather than in tirade need to listen respectfully
May find common ground where we can live peacefully.
Tell myself these words as someone presses my buttons
And my calm demeanor takes a terrible stuffing.
Cloth wraps around my face suffocating and blinding me
Know that from this knee-jerk response I somehow must break free.
But though I see better part of me circling down the drain
And feel that limbic cortex taking over my brain,
I’m just a beast of flesh and blood struggling to do my part;
Mighty hard to be better man when rationality departs.
