Mind over what matters

[shadowknows69]

Apologies to Mr. Lennon and Marley for a couple references

Is the way now set in stone?
Forever etched by humanity’s hand
Minds now unmalleable
No room left to grow

Brains capable of so much
Yet spirits still hindered
By constructs of ego and greed
Desires to be acceptable
Kings of the hill
Masters of the will
Survivors at all costs
Feeding the aching needs
Growing only division from the seeds
Tilled and planted and nurtured
In the flowing fields of Liberty

Two sides of a similar coin
Endlessly flipping
Like mindless video channels
Never landing on the truth
Only spinning on the edge
Quarantined viewpoints
Fed to the infected
To make them sicker
Sedatives to make us sleep
Hypnotic and meaningless
So short the stab of the sword
And yet the wound so very deep

Putting our mind over what matters
Applauding our own greatness
Astounding achievements of acumen
Among bountiful blunders of behavior

A silly species of rats we’ve become
Skittering around for scraps
But hey! We can run that maze
Although there’s only cheese for some
All the same, though convinced we’re not
The others run the maze the wrong way

No more common ground or common good
A house of rotting wood
Splintering and crashing
Floors weak and creaking
And the inhabitants inside
Barely notice the roof is leaking

I have little faith in a reconciling
Our minds are mired in our boggy brains
As if evolution had halted
But our brain didn’t get the note
That the head had long been dead
And we needed to revive it
To survive it
A mind can be a horrible thing to use
When the goal of the driver is to lose

A race with no more finish line
Right, Left and Center racing blindly
Along parallel tracks
Cohesion is lost
No winner possible
Abandoning universal ideals
To be on the victorious team

Party: Right or wrong
Country: Right or wrong
Family: Right or wrong

Putting mind over what matters
Humanity: Right and wrong
Coming together
One mind, one race, one love, one face
Common ground is common sense
For that we use our brain
Is there still time left for our species?
To also mind what matters and be saved?

From ourselves?
-S

[tomreedtoon]

1. Very moving, Shadow.

I face my own darkness...mostly personal, but polluted by this miserable Bush-created economy. I can't do much more about getting work than I have already done, and just hope that something clicks eventually. But I can recognize that a lot of the darkness inside me is just me, and stare it down.

And I've done what I can to help some friends who also see nothing but bleakness. A girl who's been unemployed for five years, who thought she could sue the State of Florida for unfairly firing her, and still get someone else to hire her. A guy who never dealt with the death of his mother, who is hanging onto a contract job and doesn't think his life is worth a soggy fart. Without a job of my own there's no way I can "buy" them happiness, but I try to be a friend as best I can.

And there's a lady in Alaska who ended up on the bad end of a divorce and hasn't had a job in years. A few weeks ago, she was in a bowling alley with a pair of gay friends. Some big, drunk rednecks hassled her friends. She, a 230 pound woman, waded into them and shoved them back - and took a knife into her hip for the trouble. She's stitched up, on what few drugs the docs gave her (she has no money and therefore no medical care) and I think she's the greatest hero I've ever known. But she doesn't believe she is.

All any of us can do is bat back the darkness as best we can, and try to bring on the dawn.

[shadowknows69]

2. Thanks tomreedtoon. Saturday morning kick.

[VioletLake]

3. You have a way with words.

I like this one too, but did not read it until recently: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5708262

[shadowknows69]

4. Thanks VioletLake. That was a very pesonal one to me. Glad you liked it.