How Do We Manage?

Written by Tannur Ali

This poem was initiated as a collaborative piece of work. The author continues to seek others interested in its themes to develop them from their own experience.

How Do We Manage? Make space for the Civil and the Savage In ways that take the fear away In ways that inform our Torn minds Left brain, maintain sequential states of stasis The basis for our hopes to cope Right brains tuned Wax divine None of us inclined To bring the fight Inside

So we look out On chaos and determine Self to be solution Despite our collusion Knowing the truth is Reflection The question: What are we seeing? Who are we being?

Characters in the tragedy of human existence The comedy of consciousness Our implicit reactions To dissatisfaction With being Us to them Or Them to us Smashing each other like mirrors In disgust

And what luck Each one gathered here To not be who I speak of

More-so solutions as we seep up and out Of our stations To take our places In organizations Not so wise as to mimic biology

So we try to rearrange Our state of being Our States of being Our status being Seeking

I suppose I hope for seeing

How do we manage?

What if we studied our daughters? Our borders? The ends to which we’ll go to see safety From our egos Beneath the capes of our heroes From the hoarders of Spirit Wardens of the hidden hearts That mean to bring our sleeping minds To bear against the tyranny Of blaring horns Or strumming harps Adorned in pretense With immense contest and sequence It seems we wrestle With beginnings

Like sunrise and tides

And times we know we can’t stand by And listen to the lies That we devise That say we must be inclined toward silence

Because what is war But silence? The muffled voices of the Insignificant Searching for salvation In the downbeat The beat-down The hairs that shift and twist beneath The Crown Of ignorance

How do we manage all this? Knowing we are drawn to implement order Knowing this isn’t it

It’s more like water Shifting sands of memory Tempered, we be chaos and emergence Quality and Conscience Inside twisted by outer sight Despite the truth We can hear no critics Don’t even teach civics in our schools For the oppressed may come to know That they too could rule So we rape our muse To keep up the rouse That all that we manage May just remain damaged

While we lack the courage To attend our own shit So here it is: We manage by honouring the shift From outward to inward seeing Our privilege for what it is Micro-aggressions that rule out the question What are we fighting If not our own fears Of lives without office chairs Or file drawers Slammed on the fingers of…

Tannur “SheWrightz” Ali, 2016

#tannurali

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This poem was written for the IEDC Art of Management and Organization Conference 2016, Bled, Slovenia. See The Art Of Management and Organization

Contributions to this collaborative poem should be sent to editor@workinwords.net

You can find more of Tannur “SheWrightz” Ali’s work here: shewrightz.com

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