by Sarah D Kirchner on November 21, 2019

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Features

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by Nicole Patano ’22 –

I’m an advocate of nonviolence, so I don’t want to keep beating the dead horse.
Because the more we hear, the less we feel, the same we act.
And we forget to react and retract.
It’s a fact that our actions speak louder than our words.
The silence is deafening.

If you were to ask our sentiments, I would caution the extent to which you do so.
We’re more opinionated and liberated than others,
Free from the “dams that block the flow of social progress.”
Damn. Martin Luther King, Jr. said this when he digressed from the social norm
Of separate but equal, which was really separate and unequal.
We’ve gotten over that Little Rock; now’s not the time to stop and start treating the
Mountains like molehills.
The world is still turning, and we’re still learning.
We’re all the more deserving of being taken to task.
And I ask, “Oh say, can you see?”
Or has an eye for an eye made you blind?

Wasn’t it Plato who said that we have to leave our cave to see beyond the shadows?
And somehow after 6,000 years, our minds are still like clay.
Concrete is so passé because if you’re stuck in your ways
There’s no longer a spark to ignite your flame.
So we say, “May your fire burn forever.”
And don’t let anyone put it out.
Don’t let anyone put you down.
They say the sky is the limit.
But if my calculations are correct: the limit doesn’t exist.
So why should we define ourselves by what is possible
When we truly are inexhaustible?
And we may be full of hot air, but heat rises and expands.
Travel the zephyr, ride the wave, Zeppelin.
They saved the best for last.