Are Your Decoy Dialogues Gratifying?

 

You think you're in dialogue, but you each speak alone,

Two voices in tandem, yet you each tend your own.

You wait for your turn while the other one talks,

Neither of you noticing that you’ve just traded squawks.

 

Two people a-talking, neither heard by the other,

You hear your own words, this is mostly your druthers.

You hunger for their listening, yet you settle for show,

A counterfeit exchange, real dialogue you forgo.

 

A conspiracy of blindness, the elephants walk by,

Not noticing the other's not meeting your eye.

You're starving to be heard yet agreeing to trade,

In the conspiracy of caring, each playing charades.

 

“Can you please paraphrase just the last thing I said?”

When I ask, nine times of ten, it’s not in your head.

My words into air never got over to there,

Your internal monologue leads me to despair!

 

Two people a-talking, neither heard by the other,

You hear your own words, this is mostly your druthers.

You hunger for their listening, yet you settle for show,

A counterfeit exchange, real dialogue you forgo.

 

This pattern runs deep through into centuries past,

Fake dialogues for belonging and status amassed.

For cohesion and comfort, little truth did we share,

Authentic exchange has been always so rare.

 

The judgment, the praising, the blaming, and decrees,

Blurs the sight of two beings to share what they see.

When verdicts displace what could truly be known,

The last hopes to understand have surely been blown.

 

To recognize the patterns that we played in our youth

Is itself the first step toward the practice of truth.

For real dialogue starts when we're actually changed

By what the other has said, not just misarranged.

 

Two people a-talking, neither heard by the other,

You hear your own words, this is mostly your druthers.

You hunger for their listening, yet you settle for show,

A counterfeit exchange, real dialogue you forgo.