Ode To Mankind
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Written back in 1992 and inspired by events then that are still happening today.
Prologue:
To the majority of people who seem to have lost touch
this is presented as a declaration to be treated as such.
And just for the world's deteriorating natural environment
of which we're all a contributing cause by our embodiment.
We hardly ever stop and consider how wasteful a life we lead
but continue on for the sake of progress despite our real need.
---------------
O mankind of this planet called Earth!
What is the purpose of Human birth?
You are here only for just a short time,
why not make the most of your prime?
You turn hither and thither all over the place
away from yourselves and thus fall from grace.
You're always looking for treasure out there
yet, most of the time, you end up in despair.
You usually hold on to the things that pass away
and short lasting values are the order of the day.
You create and get involved in all sorts of strife,
complicating an otherwise beautiful simple life.
You want easily to know all of life's secrets
and go about seemingly without any regrets.
You crowd your own heart with many selfish desires
and go vying for the things the other person acquires.
You do seldom ever stop and reflect on your past
nor consider how much longer the present will last.
You deem everything to be unchanging and real
and think that life is a mysterious one way deal.
You're always the one who either gains or loses
one thing or another depending on who chooses.
You esteem progress of the economical and material
and go hankering madly after the status of the imperial.
You generally prefer to receive than to give or share
and take delight in sense pleasures without much care.
You are very skeptical about the worth of any spiritual ideals
and often reject or ignore what another person sees and feels.
You kill your own kind with or without much reason
and the weather you unknowingly put out of season.
You tend to think there's nothing more than what can be seen
and rely much on the senses for most of that which you glean.
You find it hard to acknowledge a power higher than your own
and in the entire universe somehow believe that you are alone.
You have desecrated and laid waste vast areas of land
and made extinct many of the creatures by your hand.
You have carelessly polluted a lot of the water, land and air
and now wonder why it's no longer the same place out there.
You have strangled the earth; strapped it down with cement and mortar
cut down and burnt most of the trees that were giving food and shelter.
You celebrate your own birth or death with much pomp and show
yet beyond this present life very little are you ever willing to know.
You know well the term "from dust we came and to dust we return"
but what you are really, or can become, will apparently never learn.
You think only that you are made of bones, flesh and blood,
wondering how on earth you could get wiped out by a flood.
You do not fathom the effects or results of your actions
assuming what you get away with has no repercussions.
Epilogue:
You must realize that you live in a huge world of duality
and don't have to endure the pairs of opposites infinitely;
pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, love and hate, good and bad,
friend and foe, day and night, heat and cold, rich and poor it's sad
the list does go on and on indefinitely it seems
even beyond that we experience in our dreams.
We should avoid going to the extremes of these
then we can get to rise above them and so please
our True Self which is the inner witness of our existence
remaining forever unchanging not showing any resistance.
But usually coming through as the voice of conscience sometimes
like the law of justice towards the severity of small or great crimes.
____________________________________
Copyright © George Krokos | Year Posted 2024
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