When I was young, I was a poet. I published my first poem by the time I was sixteen. I had written so many poems that my sister had to buy me extra journals just to keep up with my furious pace of writing. There was so much to say, and so little time. Back then, I wrote mostly for clarity. Writing your thoughts down in verse tends to help you see things that you otherwise would not have seen, to hear things that you otherwise would have ignored. In art, we create perfect worlds so that we can see the faults in our own real world, and, hopefully, fix them before it is too late. I wrote copious amounts of literature because I knew trouble was coming. I knew that the fault line was beginning to rumble, that the fabric of society was being eaten by ravenous moths, that those moths had laid their larvae in our schools, in our libraries, in our governments, in our histories. You can kill all the adult moths you like, but they will keep laying those eggs and more will appear until you actually wash the filth out of your clothing that is. Today we are doing our best to rid ourselves of the adult moths, but we still have not had a thorough enough cleansing to snuff them out for good. This makes sense because larvae fly under the radar. They cannot be seen, nor heard. And so it is the job of the poet to make them known to a world that has proven unsuccessful at seeing problems for itself. The poet brings clarity, but it is up to you to take action. So what will you do? What will you do when all the scapegoats have been washed away? What will you do when all the threats have been vanquished? What will you do when the protests finally stop? What will you do when crime goes back down? What will you do when the politicians have had their elections? What will you do when the police stop taking your calls? What will you do when the college professors walk off their jobs? What will you do when the healthcare professionals go on strike? What will you do when the unemployed get new jobs? What will you do when the hiring managers are your enemies? What will you do when those who have been defeated, temporarily, rise again? What will you do when the people you have wronged gain positions of power? Will your enemies forgive you? Do they have a reason to? It is easy to say what goes around comes back around, but that is not what actually happens. Hamlet does not simply take his revenge in the fashion of Karma or an "eye for an eye". He goes much further than that. Revenge has nothing to do with equality; equality prevents revenge from ever occurring in the first place. But if there really is no equality. If it really is just every person for themselves, the what, exactly is to stop the people you have wronged from having their revenge on you? Everyone is touchable. Everyone can be gotten to. No one is immune. Those in despair can be become obsessed with revenge. It can become an almost religious experience to get back at others. Revenge gives people god like powers. Revenge can also drive people mad, causing them to have a blood lust that is downright insatiable. If you do not make up with your enemies before it is too late, there will come a time when they have the advantage. Everyone expects to be forgiven, but how do you know everyone has the power to forgive? And will forgiveness be enough? Will you need acceptance too? Will you need a friend? A lover? A leader? What if they forgive you with silence? With apathy? With just desserts? Once you burn a bridge to the ground and dance on its ashes there is nothing left to rebuild. It is gone...forever. Some day you will need those that you have wronged. And they will look at you and laugh. Then, there you will be, alone and with nothing: no prospects, no future, no career, no hope...nothing. What will you do? What will you do? What will you do? The next time you turn down those who are left out just remember that they remember too. So what will you do? What will you do? What will you do?