Dante, Darwin, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Nietzsche, Marx & Freud

.

It's in our nature to have a Deathwish,

(And all of us do.)

We're consumed by that one thing

From which none have escaped, yet

All somehow hope to skillfully elude .

Some die passively,

Before ever having lived at all, simply

Waiting it out.

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 would make any difference at all .

And, we feed.

Rarely full, never satisfied,

Always wanting, always hungry.

Some feed upon themselves, or

Upon those who allow themselves to be consumed;

(That Lady MacBeth-factor present in all of us.)

We kill ourselves with cigarettes, with alcohol,

With red meat, coffee, drugs and tea.

Others with religion .

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

Mathematics.

Nor was it the invention of tools or wheels,

Locomotives or cars,

Television, telephones, radio or aero planes .

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 .

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.

Though mildly significant,

These monuments were not the great monuments

To Humanity's endearing epoch,

To our subsequent state of transition, which

Brought us from way back then to all the way up now .

Humanity's greatest monument to Itself

Was ALCOHOL and DRUGS and PORNOGRAPHY,

And every other vice to which we've fallen prey, because

All else aside,

THIS is how we are summarized, and,

THIS is how we'll be remembered .

We scare the shit out of one another 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" . . . . .

© 2008 - R. MARTIN BASSO