Bedazzled

In eyes I see here, my ancestors’ gaze cast by many
There’s a hardness of a kind I can’t quite identify
And as a foreigner I know I shouldn’t judge
But I do feel a kind of sympathetic blood character
So I guess that way of looking is a staring through and past
At something – a history I may share by race by not by place
A fallen sense, a struggle born from their history I’ve not lived
Of being colonized, brutalized, and ostracized
So that compassion, in some, travels only so far now and no farther 
And all the needs of all the souls who’ve shared that history
Understood, of course, but less and less a past there’s a wish to share
Every care for others pours out the windows to the streets below
Flowing into darkness concealing them from daylight struck eyes
Who would look down or in or under on a this gifted sunlit day
When all of us need every ounce of strength remaining
To scan the horizon in hope of our own last needs fulfilled
Answers coming at us with each prayer shortening breath
Demanding all of our attention for our own fulfillment
Harder and harder our heartbeats pound just for us