Fool or martyr… by John E. Epic

Neighbors,
Seniors,
Father or mother,
Brother or sister,
You or me,
All of humanity,
Can paint such beauty,
With strokes of the paintbrush,
And such murder,
With the pull of the trigger.
The contradiction
Lies within the confliction
Between these two extremes,
As you or me
Can be
Slave or master,
Creator or destroyer,
Fool or martyr,
All based upon
Jurisdiction,
Justification,
Of how we perceive This contradiction
Between the two extremes.
We,
You and me,
See
Not in the middle,
But relate
To one of these extremes,
Thinking black & white,
That delight
Will lead to either heaven
Or hell,
That lack of sight
Is good or bad,
And the middle is forgotten,
And those that do wrong
Are not all rotten,
And those whom do good
Are not all given sainthood;
That sometimes martyrs are fools
And sometimes fate can be so cruel
Because this confliction between two extremes—the unobtainable intrinsic purities—
Does not exist
So, why should we persist
To expect That you or I
should pretend to define
ourselves and others
with terms so black & white,
such as wrong or right,
when we are human beings
than live someplace between those two extremes?…