The Gray

Why is history blind to the color gray?

My textbooks are awash with black and white words

Separating famous names into boxes with no overlap

How many bad things does someone have to do

before the world remembers them as a villain?

How many good things to get that world to forget?

What is the measure of acceptable crimes?

Is it number of people hurt?

Or how it is that you hurt them?

If you hurt the person closest to you,

but no one sees,

are you still a good person?

When you tear apart a public figure

they are reviled for a day, then revered for eternity.

Criticism has become a commodity with an expiration date.

Society will pick you apart then pick and choose

bullet point parables to put on your grave stone.

There’s nothing left but storybook stick figures to symbolize real life

Paint by number politics missing the color red,

A bloodless story cut into bite size pieces easier to swallow.

History will polarize your life, dichotomize your mind, and sanitize your words

Accept.

Forget.

The time between present and past

is getting shorter and shorter

With each passing trending topic and senseless tweet

We cycle through story after story and nothing sticks

Numb to the scandal of it all

What will our children learn decades from now?

What statues will line the streets?

Who will we idolize and demonize?

How long until history repeats?