On The Cross Of Privilege

On The Cross Of Privilege
© Surazeus
2018 07 24

While Dave is sipping mocha at cafe
with scented candles glowing in large windows,
writing verses in his moleskin notebook,
the pale man with fear blazing in his eyes
rushes through the door, making the bell tinkle,
then grabs him by the shoulders and exclaims.
"I must escape the social justice mob
for they are chasing me with sharpened pens
through tangled maze of ideologies
to crucify me on the Cross of Privilege."

Startled by vehemence of his stark fear,
Dave shakes his hands loose and then backs away.
"What did you do to arouse their hot ire
so they want to throw you on cleansing fire?"

Glancing over his shoulder in pale terror,
Don sits and drinks his mocha in one gulp.
"Sympathetic in my heart to the plight
of homeless people struggling to survive,
I composed satire in their helpless voice
with street vernacular to express well
feeling of being invisible to eyes
of healthy people with jobs and safe homes.
But when the social justice warriors,
addicted to drug of righteous outrage,
read my poem in the national magazine,
they all ganged up on me in social media
to accuse me of cultural appropriation,
and using my privilege as rich white male
to earn social capital of wide fame
at the expense of all people of color
and the poor, whose own voices are suppressed
because editors of national journals
ignore their poems in favor of the poems
written by white men, silencing their voices.
I long for the glorious days of old
when poets were judged and rewarded well
for elegant craft of well-written poems
that explore complex nature of existence,
regardless of our gender or skin color.
I want to be judged for content of poems
expressing nuanced viewpoints about life
and not just by the color of my skin."

Dave shakes his head at his myopic view.
"The fact that you can explore complex topics
reveals the privilege of your position.
You should mute the expression of your voice
in favor of voices so long suppressed."

Staring at Dave in shocked surprise, Don laughs.
"You would mute free expression of my voice
to focus attention on the suppressed
in censorship of my own right to speak
even when my speech gives the voiceless voice?
I will never suppress their right to speech
yet I will speak because it is my right,
so we can speak together on these things
in conversation to expand our minds.
How twisted are the ethics of your rules
that to give them voice you suppress my voice
when everyone has the right to free speech.
If they cannot speak I can teach them how
to express their thoughts in elegant verse
for I want to hear the thoughts they express
so I can experience their way of life
and be their ally as they find their voice."

Large crowd of angry people break the door
and surround them as Don attempts to flee,
then drag him outside to put him on trial
in the restless court of public opinion
where they find him guilty of bad behavior
and hang him on the steeple of the church.

Thrown down by the violence of their attack,
Dave crawls across vast waste land of despair,
transformed into the turtle with no wings
where he fails to sing in the blustering wind
as he searches lost for Fountain of Truth
while clinging to the Cross of Privilege.