Death on the Eve of Equality
Penni Livingston
A lawyer I know recently died.
Got sick in an afternoon meeting;
died the next morning.
He fought for others through his 85th year.
I also learned that a long ago client died.
He died of a massive stroke
while on the phone with the Mayor of the city
we fought with in years of litigation and appeals.
Taking verbal action to bring about change,
I imagine he was pretty angry about something.
Mad enough to die over his cause,
communicating his view of injustice reigning.
Yesterday on zoom, I fought a battle for justice
in my last, ever expanding litigation war
over flooding farmland from illegal levees,
trying to get to the fruition of remedy, to stop harm.
The stress in my body screamed for escape
from even having to be in the same virtual room
with pricks who fight for falsehood
who keep the fight going by gaming the system.
My mind wants a long vacation
from the work of fighting for justice under the law.
My body wants injustice to just retire-
to go out of fashion, to disappear into oblivion,
My body wants injustice to leave me the fuck alone!
To get out of my purview, to not feel like my responsibility.
My mind agrees;
my soul holds out hope for my salvation.
The devil is not real, I know this
even as opposing counsel is his spitting image.
I recall the day he told me he wished I was a man
so he could take me into the parking lot and deck me.
I watched the Senate hearings today on the ERA.
I love my Illinois Senator Dick Durbin
with his commitment to justice for all
solidifying the equality of women into the Constitution.
How could there be resistance
to such codification for equal treatment?
For recognition and acknowledgment
of equal rights and treatment under the law?
No mandate to share bathrooms with men will come. Hello!
I could hardly believe an intelligent woman
would argue against an Equal Rights Amendment
for fear of the selective service.
My eyes rolled, my jowls tightened,
yet words protruded from my mouth instantaneously
Give me a break, I responded back to the idiocy:
When was the last time we used the draft?
And when will be the first time we are mandated as equal?
Hopefully we do not have to wait until we are drafted
involuntarily into a war (likely started by men).
We all need to be in this battle for equality NOW.
When will equality for all human beings manifest in law?
Manifest in the lives of children, in reality?
When will genuine Love of the other
cover the multitude of sins?
Sins that manifest themselves as harm
to others, and therefore to Self,
are sourced from Fear (false evidence appearing real)
so often manifested as superiority and prejudice.
Fear, that ever pervasive BTBE in the pond-
one drop of poison tainting the whole body
of water, of individuals, bodies of governance,
even the fictionally created bodies of corporations.
Fear constricts bodies of thought
grates away at bodies of physique
even as contrast guides our desires
for improved conditions, better states of being.
Oh forgiveness!
The highest expression of genuine Self Love
the recognition of oneness in the body of humanity
Be my friend and savior.
Oh reformation! May I forgive and be inviolate
even without reformation from the sinning, the harmers.
I want to, I need to, I know the efficacy and power
of Love that lets go of all offence.
Yet I have doubts. Reasonable doubts?
Reasonable doubts that I will really forgive, yes.
Reasonable doubts that my forgiveness will stick
as harmers continue to harm. Yes.
I hate them the more when they harm the earth,
And for imagining the superiority of their desires,
their need for accumulation over the needs of others.
Should we not all love the people and the planet?
I am trying, working on that forgiveness that is highest love,
working to heal all inequality and prevent sorrow,
disliking actions and results while trying to love
the misguided individuals and organizations.
Oh Justice! my guiding principle,
the purpose of the law,
are ye not as inevitable as death (and taxes)?
Shall we not all meet our fate together on the other side?
Oh that Justice might be as inevitable as death,
where all are truly equal in the ultimate delivery
into the seemingly everlasting clutches of its effects,
holding on hard as the pendulum sways back and forth.
