I was charged with a misdemeanor,
based on witnesses
who imagined they heard me saying I was leaving
without a note,
even though I knew
I dinged a new red truck’s door.

I know they saw my oppositionally defiant daughter
and her careless caregiver like that
but that’s because they could not also imagine hearing

I was the driver ahead of them
holding out a 5 or 10
or even a 20,
if that was the least I had,
to any wounded person beside the road
wearing a self-made sign:
Homeless [unperson]
Please help me.

I cannot always pass
these dinged up opportunities to help.

You see I have an oldest son
now twenty-one
who is not quite right
and tries his best
but
finding and keeping a peaceful train of thought,
much less a long-term training job,
is hard for understudied him
and so he stays where he may be safely hidden
despite what resilient love can ill afford,
to rest on Other’s dime and time.

I never pass a chance to help
when need for help is obvious
as the tears we face
when humanity feels disgraced,
effaced by race,
knowing only left behind
to do the best I can
to ask us to be better, we can,
to help when They anxiously approach Us
with life’s disturbing concerns.

I make it my business to always try win/win
when someone’s in our loser mess.
It would be too out of co-empathic character
to know me as these have heard,
doing my best to avoid
a dinged your door responsibility,
because of a defiant mess I caused

I have no self-interest to not confess
and then open my eager to be warmed wallet,
already too long-suffering of privileged neglect.

But I do confess,
these are all my messes,
and yours as well.

We have too often acclimated
to this win/lose monopolistic culture,
where we do not actively care
for one another
outside our religious classrooms,
so not inside our codependent walls,
echoing with dispassionate either saved
or sinner,
not a winner.

I hope to heal your mess we cause
as gently and lovingly as I so hope
someone right now will find love’s faith to see
within my homeless not quite right son’s asking eyes:

Would you help me
fix us?
Do you know yet again
already,
we are in win/win grace together,
or we are out to fall and lose
winner v loser disgraced
apart?

If you see him
let him go
do not scold him
by his show

Be less mean and mad
in co-empathic care’s return.

Try with me to relearn
he’s done his almost best
to get Winner v Loser anxiety
more religiously right,
less desecrating wrong,
next irreligiously Othered time.

So feel free to lavish praise
on how close he might have come
to doing better healthcare wealth.
This helps him, and you,
feel and remember better kindness kin
and perhaps even rather less than worse
original dissociative sin.

It would be my misdemeanor
to not do my best
wherever I see our mess
and yet
I confess
I cannot always see sin
in this interdependent swaying way.

These watchers and listeners and speakers against me
must also misunderstand,
yet perhaps that’s all to life’s good

Makes me wonder
how they would re-imagine me
if they had recognized that old white guy in front,
stopped to say a privileged yes
to each unhoused
unloved
dinged up mess.

Could we all take and give
better time enough
to just say healthy yes
to wealthy benefits
of religiously straight
monopolistically white
patriarchal winners
re-engaging co-empathic win/win enrichment
with our internal Non-Othering
Gaia Hypothetical side.

On our best
doing our almost less mess
cooperatively co-passionate
interdependently reweaving
not dark night
and not worst play

sacred Earth still co-revolving
another organically living
lovely day.