A poem I wrote sometime two years back about the human nature’s destructive ideological certainty. Initially I was frustrated by such a tendency on the Right, but recently I’ve started noticing it on the Left too where it grew dangerously in the last few years.
We wipe our dust-stained lenses,
Presuming clarity.
Yet we see the dust the same as vulgarity,
When the odd dimensions of our reality
Could never comprehend the idea
That the dust has been here since forever.
That we are the ones who are new.
The odd dimensions are too few
In the skies and the earth we view,
Presuming to know which way is up, and down.
Whichever way the dust never settles,
We point our fingers to it and call it “Paradise”.
We wipe our dust-stained lenses,
Presuming clarity,
Where it will rise, defying all gravity,
Only to settle back on the mile-long roads
Where we think we’ll find “Paradise”.
No matter how much we kick the dust in the air,
The gale scatters it around as we stare,
Bewildered. No matter how unwanted, unfair,
The dust, no stranger, has always been there.
It makes the earth we stand on.
It will dirty the water we drink,
But it will love a tree enough to make it bare fruit
For every bit of hope for every step we take.
Still, we still wipe our dust-stained lenses,
No matter at whose expenses
For the sake of reduced dimensions
That rejects the heavens at all directions
But one.
We will run for the office to preach our dismal truths,
Or we gun down feet with different boots,
And when the suns shines
On the blood of the youth,
We’ll find the dust settling again
On the vacant bodies, that will stand horizontally,
Their heads pointing at different directions,
And we will presume
They have lost their compass.
They will no longer wipe their dust-stained lenses,
As if trying to say,
“Paradise?
It’s this way, and that way,
And this way, and that!
It’s every place our limbs, skulls and
And dead gazes are pointing at.
Here, there’s no up nor down,
No perfection, no discord, no crown.
It’s actually not that exciting,
And you’d know if you’ve seen the gust
That blows the dust,
To complete every rose,
Every crust in eyes that will never open,
To remind us
That it’s an easy one-way ticket.
Take the time to cherish what you leave behind
Before you go and get it.”
These voices scatter into the wind
And turn into dust, like they always do.
Then we pick our colored dusty lenses
And we wipe it
Like we always do.