How Do You Know? Poem by Julia Luber

People never know who they're hurting nor why.
And yet the fastest justification somebody shoves
in your ears is, "But it's not hurting anybody. I should
get to do whatever I want to do."

And tell me, people who are so smart and know everything
about how other people feel about what you are doing-
tell me, how do you know if what you are doing is hurting
somebody or not. Bothering somebody or not. Triggering

the worst nightmares or not. How could you possibly even know
if you are reminding somebody of the time they had to figure out
the 'true' identity of somebody- the world's most wanted terrorist.
How do you know what floods of traumas and fears you might be

triggering in somebody, reminding them of being a spy during wartime
and having to be under cover. Reminding somebody of the fear they felt
when they identified So and So Joe Terrorist now in the neighborhood under
a different name, without his beard, without what he thinks is his spiritual

staff. How do you possibly know what you are reminding somebody of?
Do you know the whole history of war and what that person might be being
reminded of by what you are doing…..having to live in disguise, deception,
getting to invent a name an change legal documents and make fodder

of so much legal procedure and efforts to keep files in tact. How can you
possibly know if you are hurting somebody or not? Do you need to see
an axe splicing somebody's head and blood spurting out all over to know
that or if you are hurting somebody? Do you need to drive somebody into

killing you to know if you are bothering somebody or not? Do you need things
to be that obvious and show-offish and bold spoken and IN YOUR FACE to
know that you are hurting somebody. Do you know that you are reminding
a proud people kindof 'blackface' twenty four seven. Making mockery of

a natural granted identity. Making stereotyped spoofery of some peoples'
sincerest and only sense of a scientific absolute. What do you need somebody
to do to you to know that you are hurting somebody? What do you need to feel to
know that you are making somebody strictly uncomfortable, paranoid, annoyed?

Or are you completely desensitized to how you make others feel? Or are you
a complete and pure sadist who gets tremendous sense of egotization and
a soaring sense of self worth every time you upset somebody else? One man's
treasure is another's trash. And maybe it's that way with the mind too.

Do you like using reams of legal time and public resources and time time time
and effort effort effort to make it 'legal' to LIE ON LEGAL DOCUMENTS! And
claim something about your birth that is not true. Do you like and respect the
effort and time that some people went to to institute LIES ON LEGAL DOCUMENTS?

Does it scare you that they have the time to deal with such idiotic things?
Do you think they are trying to make the person who's nerves felt a weird
threat of deception and deceit every time they were around that person and
wondering why, so they go check: and not to let their senses feel any relief

and resolution. And let them know that their discerning sense of fraud, a lie,
something in genuine and pure artifice - unnervingly so: might have been
pure intelligence and astute sensitivity to reality? A reality beyond that which
one is 'trained' to acknowledge. Do you want to make them feel paranoid

and uncertain of themselves for life? Seems so to me. How do you know what you
are triggering in somebody else? How do you know if you are terrifying somebody
that Truth will never be acknowledged nor respected and that there is no reason
to even trust the legal system because it is just people lying on documents.

I want to know how you know if you are hurting somebody or not? Or why you
would think and platform that being hurt is only an obvious and violent thing.
Why do you need violence over you and others to know? How can you pretend
that you know what another is thinking or feeling or what you are triggering

or why you are making them uncomfortable. But you like it and get a power
trip out of it. That's hard on me. Knowing how shamelessly sadistic, clueless,
aarogant and deceitful and disrespectful you are of others feelings is scaring
me: A LOT. You are reminding me of terrible things. Is that what you want to do?

And why? Tell me. Let me tell you.