Love Poem: Hate Crimes
Gerald Dillenbeck Avatar
Written by: Gerald Dillenbeck

Hate Crimes

When is hate,
voiced and aggressively acted out,
not a crime
victimizing all us criminals,
convicted and otherwise?

Should we criminalize
fear of fundamentalists
or anger about presumably predative aliens
or anxiety about internal
and external
climate changes
or worry about long-term costs compared to short-term benefits
of violent revolutions
in lives outside our narrow ego walls?

How does criminalizing hate
deter or feed it?

Does punishment for aggressively articulated bad attitudes
merely add hostile fuel
to short-fused flames?

Would active hate fade away
if criminalization evaporated?

Would love grow easier
if colonizing bullies,
with bibled GoodNews liberating intentions,
returned to creolization supporting naturally polypathic children
daily longing for reborn WinWin multicultural Trust?

PreHate children
prefer co-empathic PositiveParadise
and not so much loseLose
hellfire breathing hate
projected onto a jealous
all-powerful ecopolitical
yet personal
ForceSource.

What about crimes other than hate,
motivated by greed
or need,
or something in-between?

I would not know how
to criminalize my rampant raving revolutionary needs.
But your greed remains better locked up
for stealing our properties
and too loudly proclaiming me
your stupid and deluded chattel
at your greediest disposal
except for my inconvenient properties,
transparently vulnerable needs
to eat and drink
to taste and see
nutritious GoodFaith Integrity.

When, if ever, is active hate
not a crime against health?

When criminals, like greedy us,
are free to return polypathic love
to grow toward co-empathic trust
in our cooperatively nurturing
mutual listening
non-threatening and non-bullying
mutual infatuation,
curiosity,
co-redeeming grace
of mutual invitation
into shared trust 
democratic space.

A place
not feeding prisons
while watering polypathic 
free-range love.