cruel to be just kind * 8/30/13

Such an odd fate, 

to settle for the blade of kindness

and not truly address what is seen,

to retreat into the short lives of compliments

and unchallengeable positions of service,

to not risk being judged for saying a deeper truth,

to acquiesce to another's comfort zone politics,

to find suitable answers outside 

of sensitivity's observance, 

to live into a lesser focus 

as if enrolling of others required it, 

as if this form of denial 

is a performance form taken to heart 

and internalizing it is, in some measure, 

giving off a presence of social grace, 

offering a suitable mask of sincerity 

to live down the contrivance, 

to appear to have lead an un-offensive life 

in the measure of all others' eyes,

to have debated internally inconclusively 

as an avoidance style 

from acknowledging deeper principles.

If caring is a falsification of chaos, 

if kindness is a looking past, 

a not wanting to interrupt another's movie, 

where are there restraints 

about kindness and caring 

or are they permission granted statuses 

of acceptable interactional sharing?

Are we all involved in some sort of version 

of the king's invisible clothes storyline?

Are we accomplices in the tradeoffs

with having each other as friends?

Is the value of humankind ever diminished 

to the posture of caring, as benchmarks 

reserved for only demonstration status?

Where, in caring, does interest become insult,

observation become heresy, 

genuine concern become premeditation, 

insistence become interference?

Is the right to life, 

a right to aloneness and isolation?

Are we not all in some method, by avoidance,

of socially acceptable self-suicide?

When is fearfulness to say not only an act of vanity?

When do complaints register as care rendered?

If my need to care envelops all others around me

then what is my agenda?

What if I need to appear to be kind by being kind? 

How can kindness hurt anybody?

Doesn't kindness have its own agenda? 

Kindness in spontaneous response seems wonderful,

but if someone only has a kindness button 

and it is on all the time, 

is there not room for suspicion? 

So what if kindness is really a relational placation 

to get along or to be non confrontational?

So what is an acceptable motivation for kindness,

an exceptional loving heart, 

no matter what first impressions?

If kindness is as a get-by mode, 

as it makes no waves

nor be seen in a bad light, 

then is kindness as a result,

a judgment strategy, 

kindness as a form of shielding,

or kindness as a privacy method, 

kindness as a prison, 

as proof of aloneness and isolation,

kindness as a means of justifying unworthiness?

Kindness, as calculable, is scary.

Treating a cynic with kindness interacts like how?

How empty can it be?

When kindness meets up with kindness,

how many doors can kindness not open?

Is it not so that every act has its elements 

or facets of kindness, 

even if they are not formalized

and directed with attention?

When is kindness an environment for disease?

Can there be that much paradox

between appearances and source?

When, in personal politics, 

did kindness get a technical position?

Isn't kindness an indirect way of un-approachability?

Why do we call it out as the discernment of kindness?

When does kindness loose its innocence, 

that kindness is a broker for something 

so much subtler as to remain unnamed?

What is that that goes on yet falls prey 

to the claims of the currency of kindness?

What distance need be gained by naming it

as if identified by its appearances?

How short of frame, to ponder motive 

as if concealed by acts.

Acts that are ignited and sweetly passed

as the communing of kindness in flame,

warmly consuming all in its path.

It’s cruel to be just kind . . .