Coming Soon | Solona Armstrong

Love (a spoken word poem)
by Solona Armstrong

Adrienne Clarkson, on air in my home spoke of racial congruence and how to resolve dissolved relations among nations. She spoke of conflict and all the crucial talks we must have with each other. But then she made a statement which for me represented the abatement of consent and the reason behind segmentation in the first place.

She said it was a mistake to believe that all we need is love.

That "love" can not solve the problems that have sprung among the diverse in our countries. And I said aloud, "I don't agree!" but I don't think she heard me.

So I'm just itchin' to make my words heard beyond the bounds of my kitchen in hopes that one day it will occur to us absurd ever to have slurred the profoundness of love.

Love - and no I don't mean the kind that blinds you from all but the one who's acquired the saccharin flavour of your desire; sticks to your fingers or quickens the beat of your ticker.

I mean LOVE, the very seat of our presence. The essence that completes and carries every particle in space. The space between space. The base of our souls. The place where divinity lies, infinity multiplies, and mysteries find their disguise.

The soft gooey centre we comprise when you've sucked on the shell that melts once you've felt the actuality of someone else's reality.

And when you enter that core transformed by the rind of a heart (for no heart can explore another and remain the same), what you find is not a mind full of views but a few of the kinds of glues that bind us together.

You find the slice of a soul that seeks shelter from the pervasive cancer: "It's a mistake to believe that all we need is love" and quests instead for the ubiquitous safety synonymous with the statement, "Love is the ONLY answer!"

No law, no regiment, or politician's circumvent, no party spouting propagandic puff pieces, (about as ineffectual as monkeys flinging feces), could ever adhere us as solidly or rejoin the interspersed disconnect we call our species.

Ok, so you're Vegan and I eat fish.

But there is a plan and I have a wish... for every atom in every cell to break its spell and find the relish in love.

For every civilian, from the first to the six billionth to say, "I did my best. I let my opinions rest and I deemed myself blessed to have YOU as a neighbour. I gave the most of myself and the rest rots in compost, enriching our shared soil.

I was bestowed with the intrinsic instinct to instigate love with all - whether Indian, Indonesian, intolerant, or inept. And I did.