We are elemental at best –
Universal matter in every sense of the word.
I say “at best” because we already know our worst.
It’s broadcast on the evening news every night which is why
I quit watching television a long time ago.
Instead I watch people,
And learn the best and worst on a daily basis, first hand.
I watch light and dark of personalities change
As quick as a dealer’s hand flipping cards in blackjack.
You’ve got a 3 showing, but the mystery lies
With that one blind card -- is it the one
You need to win the pot or
The one that will strip you clean?
You don’t know, but there’s always optimism.
There’s no choice. You’re hoping for the best or you would have
Left the table and cashed out a long time ago.
And so it goes.

We are mysteries to each other only showing the part of ourselves
We allow, leaving people to lean on hope, we hope.
Because we’re elemental at best.
The elements in the periodic table make up our make up,
They are the matter that matters most.
And when politicians and teachers talk about universal issues,
Universal themes, universal feelings to try to unite
Humanity over some common ground,
As if we don’t realize that we’re all human,
Maybe they have a point, because maybe we’ve forgotten
That we were all born of light a long time ago.
We are universal matter in every sense of the word.
Why then do we tear each other apart in wars blindly followed
Rather than wishing on the star dust of which we’re made?

Sometimes I feel like an alien in this world.
If you’ve felt that way, too, does that just make us more human?
I once asked my mother if she remembered having birthed me,
Thinking, perhaps, I was dropped here by accident
In a foreign planet which would explain
Why so much makes so little sense to me…
Like why god in his infinite wisdom
chose to make the brightest burning stars,
Supernovas, so beautiful only when they’re dying
By violent explosion, spreading their essence through the rest of the universe,
Sprinkling their elements across emptiness,
Seeding the sky for new proto-stars to form…
Does that mean that every star in the sky is just a rebirth of old ones?
When will we realize that we’re just the same?
Humanity studying humanities
In some ironic twist, showing a history of behaving inhumanely
Toward our kindred spirits,
Destroying a world and its inhabitants,
Made of the essence of our very own being
Because we never learned how to simply be.
When will we learn to love ourselves more than this?
Will anyone be left to teach the lesson?
We are elemental at best –
Universal in every sense of the word.
Take a telescope,
zoom in across time and space,
add an x-ray lens,
see through my skin,
switch to a microscope
and focus down to the cellular level
now look closely,
see that little twinkle in the nucleus
that's the star dust I’m made of.

Make a wish.

01/12/2009

Posted on 01/12/2009
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