Pick A Fight

"pick a fight"

it is sad

to me, to see how you engage
lately.

People
disagree with you,
you characterize them

as stupid, as uneducated.
You tell them
their thinking needs to be eradicated

- then you call yourself the one hurt,
the one marginalized,
invalidated, unsafe?
You seem
more interested in leveling charge,
in accusation, than in any
respectful exchange

of views. I don't see anything
I could call a real insult, attack,

this isn't a warning, or a threat of smackdown. It's more

just: a plea
Please.
Please stop.
- I just wish you
'd find a way to

drop the combative
, the angle of attack.

Because you know, you have a lot
to say that I'd like to be able
to speak to. Me, and others

want to respond to your views,
and try to. Everything's
open to discussion
if people could be respected - I myself
take as my ideal on that one: be
no respecter of views, but
an infallible respecter of persons. I'd like
to be more like that. Well, we

all fly off
the handle a bit

sometimes. We're adults
and can take it,

but I'd like
to think

under
the disagreement can be peace,
each secure in an inviolable recognition of the others'
worth. Regardless
of the worth we attach to the other's views.

Isn't opinion
severable from a human being's worth? Dignity.

Your views have been welcomed.
It isn't your views

that discomfit people, not by any means. The acid
you launch them with is why. It
makes it hard not to bridle,
makes it very hard to
care. So, you mentioned not feeling
safe or respected, here

- okay, that's your experience and your prerogative
to say.
But
you
complain of others invalidating your experience -
meanwhile I see you again

and again,
invalidate
others.

You've been hurt, OK.

So have I.
So have many of us - different, myriad, incomparable
ways.
Such comparison is odious.

You're the one who seems bent
on turning it into a contest
where your experience of pain trumps all.

Would it help if we say, "you win?" I don't care
who has been hurt worst.
First prize victim's ribbon in the agony pageant -
not something I have a chip on my shoulder to win, you know
why? Because
it's sick,
and unfair
that either of us has been hit
with injustice, injury and illness at all -

let alone to turn it into a thing
to fight each other over.