Dante, Darwin, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Nietzsche, Marx & Freud
It's in our nature...
To have a DeathWish,
(And, yeah man, all of us do.)
We're consumed by That One Thing
From which none have escaped,
Yet all of us, skillfully,
Hope to elude.
It's in our nature...
For some die passively,
'Fore ever having lived truly at all,
Simply Waiting It Out
And THAT ain't right.
Naw, THAT ain't right.
Others die violently,
Kicking and screaming and ranting to the grave,
With daydreams,
With fantasies of taunting the Reaper,
Of denying Fate,
As if It makes any difference.
And, we feed.
All in all, ON, all all all...
Rarely full,
Or satisfied,
Always, always wanting more.
Still young, still hungry, in old age
As we feed upon ourselves, until...
We Grant ourselves permission,
Just to be... Consumed.
'Tis the Lady Macbeth in all of us, true.
And THAT ain't right.
Naw, THAT ain't right at all.
We Humans kill ourselves so well!
Its our species' highest water-mark
Who needs a God so committed to Fate
When we kill ourselves so well...
Yeah, THAT's real evolution, man...
Some wild, wacky stuff, man...
As a species so evolved that it stands its ground,
Ne'er looking within or ahead, only looking down
To master how we thrill ourselves,
we kill ourselves,
with cigarettes and alcohol,
With red meat, coffee, drugs and tea.
Others with religion.
Yes, with religion...Halleluiah!
Lord... Save me from your followers,
Not necessarily from your wrath... Amen!!
We scare the shit out of each other with
Dante, Darwin, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud,
Then scratch our heads and mumble
"I do not know."
While others shake their shaggy manes and sigh
"I do not care."
Humanity's greatest monument
Wasn't the harnessing of fire, or
The assessment of gravity,
Or the mastering of language, the sciences,
Or of Mathematics... No!
Nor was it the invention of tools or wheels,
Locomotives or cars,
Television, telephones, radio or of aeroplanes... No!
Humanity's greatest monument
Wasn't the advent of computers,
The launching of satellites, or
The exploration of sea and space, nor
Was it the art of strategy and war, or
The savior-faire of diplomacy and peace.
Humanity's greatest monument
Wasn't Creationism, Solipsism, Buddhism, Evolutionism or
Any other ‘-ism'
Nor was it literature, poetry, prose, dance, art, music, sculpture,
Or scripture... No!
Humanity's greatest monument
Wasn't the realization of emotion, or
The manipulation of the opposable thumb;
Nor was it the ability to chronicle and recant History, or
Our obsession with plotting and hypothesizing the future.
Humanity's greatest monument
Didn't come about by us moving from the trees into the caves,
From the caves into tents,
From the tents into huts,
Then into hamlets, then into villages, then into townships,
Into cities and eventually into Metropoli .
... No!
Humanity's most endearing testament,
To our subsequent state of transition, which
Brought us from way back then to all the way up now.
Humanity's greatest monument self
Was every vice to which we've fallen prey
For, all set aside, THIS is how we are summarized, and,
And for THESE THINGS ALL, are how we'll be remembered.
We scare the shit out of one another with
Dante, Darwin, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud.
We look around and scratch our heads and mumble "I do not know."
While others shake their shaggy manes and sigh "Lord; I do not care" . . . . .
© 2008.
