Musings on the Flowering Spring of Everyday Souls

[Originally published in Soul: {Anthology of Poems} & in Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self] 


“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. --Albert Einstein

Perhaps some vexed fire breathing mythical furor will immolate the
          anthropomorphic earth
Already smarting from desecration and disparagement from fellow
          anthropoids,
In a cataclysmic Inferno although already in attrition in exchange for change,
In exchange for contrition for what and who we’ve wounded,
A temporary impedimenta involving pondering our own failures to evolve
Beyond things that are tinged with an altered hue from our own…
A phalanx of obstinate, bellicose, secular, egalitarian democratic misfits flock
          the streets in gripe
Bellies full of Teutonic pragmatism & visceral dictums of right and wrong;
Adopting pioneering separatist ideologies of dissent against imperialists
Akin to The Great Pilgrimage to the Americas, a leitmotif of displacement and
          resilience
Throughout human history; proselytizing the proletariat to join their cause
          with an odious sneer!
But who am I? Perhaps a perennial philosopher:
“Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am”
Thank you Rene Descartes for your rarefied ideologies…
I am an evolving being willing to listen to others involving
In the daily duties of being human, what choice does one have? But there’s
          always a “choice”,
We can “choose” to evolve or we can simply dissolve by default…
I am grateful to be here on earth, grateful for the power of “choice”
Even as the world around me is seemingly crumbling…dissolving…
For over the years I have come to know that:
“Everything in [our lives] is happening to teach [us] more about [ourselves] so even in a crisis be
grateful…live in a space of gratitude…” Thank you Oprah Winfrey for your proletarian approach to philosophy! 

We are in a crisis of polarity that is deflowering our gardens
Pitting brother against brother, sister against sister, wives against husbands,
Dispute ideas and beliefs don’t invalidate & dismiss the people who have them,
don’t give up on each other, all deserve to be heard and understood;
Yet we still have to remember even as we hurt, we don’t have to suffer,

          However!

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with
scars.” Thank you Khalil Gibran for your tarry
          pansophy.
Open your heart to your scars, befriend your scars, let wounds of
The past strengthen and heal you rather than weaken & hurt you;
Even as we get angry, we don’t have to forfeit our ability to be joyful,
It is not happiness that makes us grateful, it is gratefulness that makes us happy…

We can find our strength in our weakness, for “God’s strength is made perfect in weakness”
Thank you Corinthians: 2. Keeping in mind that the early mystics
          perceived
God without subjecting him to tangible proof…
Name calling is the last refuge of the monosyllabic;
Be mindful of your words and resist engaging in
Gratuitous verbal violence of the morally virulent and their unconscious ilk

Amidst the clamor of contrived and nebulous directives for divisions;
Know that what’s meant for you will never miss you and
What misses you was never meant for you,
Anything that has your attention becomes your energy and manifests itself into your existence,
Evoke Immanuel Kant’s first rule in his categorical imperative
          philosophy:
“Don’t use other human beings as a means to an end”
Remember! we are products of our past not prisoners of it…
May the best of your yesterday be the worst of your tomorrow!


Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication "You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self"  & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of  Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, amazon etc...  He has been published in prestigious  publications such as Muddy River Poetry Review, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others...Visit him at http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.