words are weapons - original poem edited

i want to forget my competitive drive.
if i don’t change, i’ll be damned by the mind that never thought it was good enough
unless it was showing someone up.

in that big movie, denzel washington as melvin tolson said words are a weapon.
but i’ve known that since i learned to talk.
what if instead those words were used to build bridges we could walk across?
a bridge that leads from the lonely space in my heart
to the hungry space in your belly,
a bridge that leads from the silence behind your queer gear
to the manhood protected by the cup in my jock strap,
a bridge that leads from inside a book only he’s smart enough to read
to the space she doesn’t fill up in her jeans because she no longer eats.

he said words are weapons;
but who in the world are we fighting?
why would we use something so beautiful
to undercut someone who is already crying?
if we are going use this gift to destroy,
let us only be capable of tearing down the walls we’ve built around our humanity.
may i be damned if i shoot down someone else’s words
just to hear myself speak.
if we’re going to use this blessing to kill,
may we be incapable of taking the life of anything that has time to get it right still.

but may the universe allow this:
let us rip to shreds every parchment that has ever decreed
that i hate someone who’s not like me.
let us smash to bits every box we see so they can no longer close us in.
let us pull down the religious structures here
that only teach us how to hate and how to live in fear.
let us bulldoze the emotional monuments that stand for greed, and pride, and division,
and plant a garden that will only grow fruit healthy enough for eating.

i’d rather use my words as seeds,
plant them in the garden of this world and let them be watered with divinity.
i hate my competitive drive.
in fact, may i be stripped of my very life when i become so busy getting mine
that i forget to save the world.