Howdy, Neighbor! Greetings To Those Who See Me As An Enemy Too! #Peace #IranWar #Gaza #WarCrimes

Shivering Utterance

Love thy neighbor. Love thine enemy.

The neighbor is mowing the lawn.

It is loud, like a chorus of roaring bears,

claws swirl like blades, swiping at all in their path.

Debris flies indiscriminately in steady, malevolent blasts.

It’s all I can hear.

Yet I must stay silent.

I must not complain. I must not speak up.

To do so would be understood

as hateful.

They are mowing the lawn.

Mowing.

Mowing.

Mowing,

as a singular objective.

The mantra goes,

“If I mow it, it’s mine.

It is mine now, because I’ve mowed it.

Subdued it, like a captured virgin.”

I want to scream

unbridle the scorched-earth blade-shearing metaphors

stirred up in my smoldering mind.

The only shivering utterance escaping vocal cord vibration is,

“Love thy neighbor. Love thine enemy.”

Still, they mow

and mow

and mow.

The earth is the shorn head

of a prison camp child,

shamed, neglected, and violated.

No time to pause, reflect, or break bread

with all the mowing left to do.

Love thy neighbor. Love thine enemy.

Between this unheard plea

and the screams beneath the scalp of the earth

under the whirling blades

is a fence once built by prior residents

of both sides

who have since relocated

to the skies.

Pride has driven preachers to madness

in trying to straddle it

when they should have just sat quietly and listened

for these ancestral voices

before the mowing started.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Love thy neighbor. Love thine enemy.

As thyself.

Sandra K Kingã2026