Where Truth Lies

Where's the love and compassion for our neighbor?

Helmets, masks and guns,
roaming streets
in places where no one
asked them to come,
looking for someone, anyone,
who doesn't look like them.

Reminiscent of tin soldiers
and Nixon coming,
killing students 
for protesting a war
halfway around the world;
this time it's federal agents
with Trump applauding,
killing a mom 
and a nurse
for protesting a war
on immigrants
here at home.

Life Magazine cover photo from Kent State shootings, May 1970.

Fifty plus years ago
it was four dead
in Ohio,
now it's two more dead
in Minnesota.
What have we learned?

Where's the love
and compassion
for our neighbor,
for our fellow man,
in a country rooted in
the natural and universal
unalienable rights to life, 
liberty and pursuit of happiness?

Where's the committed right
to freedom of speech, 
to peaceably assemble and protest,
to due process,
to innocent until proven guilty?

Unfortunately, yet again,
the truth lies 
on the ground.