Show me your art —

Your latest composition
Your conducting videos
The song you wrote while sailing in Maine
Your plein air paintings
Your paper-cuttings
Your anime watercolors
The poem you wrote
The book you self-published
Your feature film script

Show me your art —

A joke from your stand-up
The comic you drew
The movie you filmed by yourself in Costa Rica
The pottery you sculpted
The mittens you knitted
The bread you baked
The tomatoes in your garden
The steaks you grilled on your birthday
Your grandmother’s lasagna recipe

Show me your art —

Not to drown out or ignore all the hate and sadness
But to restore order to the universe
To balance the dark with the light
The yin with the yang
The dissonance with the consonance
Show me all the good and beautiful things that flood your heart

Show me your art —

MICHAEL MARKOWSKI
June 18, 2025

WE FIGHT HATE WITH LOVE
By Christopher “Chilo” Cajigas

Sunshine blessed the Community
In a Unity of Togetherness.
He says he remembers it:

Hearing the horns in the background when he was born,
Everybody there gathered around in the morn’ to offer their well-wishing.
Blessed by clergy, his parents swore
To always keep him and his siblings safe.

They had such high hopes for the places he would go,
The people he would affect,
The family he would raise,
And the communities he would empower.

And the child would play as children do,
The music and the melodies, they made him move.
He felt the groove, the lows and the highs,
And it all came together with the notes and vibes.
He loved to explore, loved to go outside,
When the sun his his face, smiles opened wide,
In a type of world where the weak don’t survive,
He greeted strangers in the streets and socialized.

His aura attracted others,
Yet some parents told their kids not to play with his “kind.”
Because he was “different.”
And that hurt him inside—being “othered.”

But his mother told him to always be a kind, sincere person of honor.
He obliged.

At times, he still found bullies on the playground,
Called names, teased and shamed,
Until one afternoon unexpectedly saved
By an elder whose experienced words proclaimed:

“We are only as strong as our weakest link;
Our strength lies in Collective Unity.
No matter where it is that you call home,
Nobody out there can do it all alone.
And there is something to be said about assisting,
Communicating with, and considering
The village as a whole,
Responsible in our roles
So that the members are always respected.
In Community, we are all Connected!”

He was affected by these words,
And even believed them.
He ended up thinking about them during the evening,
As well as a new one he learned that day in school:
“Appeasement.”

And so he thought about how he’d combat the cruelty
And lunacy he faced outside,
Because he was not blind to how the world was not kind,
And though it took him quite a while,
After some time, he finally realized:
We fight hate with love!
We fight hate with love!

And at that moment,
It was as if something had hit him from above.
His heart was open—
He was resigned and determined to
Fight hate with love!

Christopher “Chilo” Cajigas teaches “US History” and “The Art of Written Expression” to high school students in Riverhead, Long Island. As a writer/performer, he has been featured at notable venues such as Carnegie Hall, NJPAC, Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theater, and the Newport Jazz Festival. He is a founding member of the award winning NYC based poetry collective, El Grito de Poetas. His catalog includes over 12 Hip Hop albums, and he’s been published in various poetry anthologies, along with his own solo offering, Closed Doors and Opened Windows. In 2014, Chilo was featured on the Grammy-winning album The Offense of the Drum by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra.