by Arif Ahmad

For all of our blood spilling differences,

How so different are we really?

The anatomy taught in medical schools,

Is it different for Muslims, Christians and Jews?

Don’t we all have the same workings, the same physiology?

The same disease processes, the same pathology?

Or does the appendix lay different for a Shia from a Sunni?

Or the neurons in the brain transmit differently?

Does cancer affect an Indian and spare a Pakistani?

Or Russians have two and Americans just one kidney?

Does aspirin work differently for a Palestinian and an Israeli?

That blood on the ground still some wet,

Is theirs red and them’s mulberry?

For sure the heart is where the difference has to be.

Well not really,

For I doctor the heart, and that is something I have yet to see.

So if all shades of skin are the same within,

Why such hate and to this extreme?

To me it does seem akin,

To darn our own self and damn our own being.

For we can hurt, we can kill, to our want, to our will,

And keep playing havoc,

On this tiny planet, this pale blue dot.

When all is, said and done,

We remain “Fundamentally One”