The Human Race for Carnage and Competency

These everyday things,

But what are they exactly?

And why does an ode to mundane

Daily ritual dictate the

Small yet promising plot of life that

We are given to sow?

At what point do we acknowledge

The nine to five,

The eight to three,

The daily grind,

The demise of all that challenges

And further obliterates society’s four-cornered,

Premeditated sketch

Of existence?

Is it possible to have become so

Flush with constituents of orthodoxy

That we have been stripped of malleability

And intellectual vastness,

Left naked and embarrassed to exude

Any action other than conformity?

At what point do we deny

The audacious persistence

Of a continuous slaughter,

Execution,

And carnage of both

Earth and man?

We stand here,

With a pivot radius so

Squandered we cannot even

Flee our own minds,

And we dictate.

A dictation of both

Words and power,

Of both language and policy.

We emanate a superfluous

Air of superiority,

Our chests inflated.

Yet this Earth,

This world,

Does not belong to us.

We belong to it,

And as people we belong

To one another.

We have unimaginable

Potential,

Importance,

And influence,

But to which areas we allocate

Our meaningful impact

Is what is of significance.

At what point will things change?

If we do not redirect the flow

Of our modern dystopia,

Do we really want to be the

Ones who watch this story play out,

Who watch this story end?

Humanity is our story and

The landslide that we have been

Incessantly feeding will surely show

No mercy.

A Riddle of Time

To be on the road

Means life holds some essence of

Destination,

That life expects there to be

Movement

From within you,

A shift of time and matter

From present to future.

A travel,

A journey,

An experience,

Are all products of time;

Time as a composition of

Earthly and cosmic turns,

As an unattainable concept

That we strive to perfect.

So, if time is created by man,

Is socially constructed,

And is as abstract as abstract seems to get,

How does it seem to dictate

And shape

Every aspect of living?

Time is thrown away,

Laughed off,

Ostracized,

And shoved into the corner.

Simply taken advantage of.

Yet, time is an obsession,

A daily regiment,

The global dictator

Whose reign is adamant and always demanding.

It relays and regulates every millisecond of our

Every single day,

Yet we seem to be both

Over-aware and ignorant of its concept

And its ever-lurking presence.

It’s the elephant in the room

That many do not seem to accept

With full awareness and recognition.

We have a sense of living time,

Of human time,

Of constant earthly time,

Beating in

Seconds, minutes, hours,

Turning into

Days, months, years.

Yet every single one of these is limited.

Each one is both a miniscule and a grandiose representation

Of our tread upon earth,

Of the effective sinking of our footprints into the soil,

Whether it be in forward or backward motion.

We expectantly project into the future

And hesitantly reach deeply back into our past,

Believing both will help us in our

Current situation.

Yet we don’t seem to allow ourselves to focus

On the beating time

Occurring at the fleeting moment

Of our current situation.

If the Now is disregarded,

Neglected,

Simply overlooked,

Are we then solely living for the future,

Or simply living in our past?

What happens, then, when the Now is all we live for,

Is all we believe to be relevant?

In reverence to this,

September 24^th, 25^th, and 26^th

Were impeccable paradigms of

Moving simply and willingly

With the ebb and flow

Of life’s unpredictability

And passage of time.

It was three of us

Dropped on the side of a dirt road—

One with trickling traffic, mind you—

With hiking packs in tact and thumbs greeting

Passing cars in hopes of meeting

A willing soul.

After 22 minutes,

57 seconds,

And 15 cars,

A cloud of dust shrouded us

As a truck pulled off the road

And aided the first leg of our trek

Up the mountain.

We met willing souls for

Three days straight,

Riding in the beds of numerous pick-ups,

And hitchhiking our way

Up,

Down,

In,

And out

Of the national park.

We waded through glacier water,

Stumbled upon a rock beach island

Forward-facing a cascading waterfall,

Napping in the beating rays

With the cataract exploding at our toes.

We camped directly next to

The rushing river,

The sun setting low

On the rapids,

The sound of tires on gravel road,

The beam of intermittent headlights,

And the stars opening up the sky

Through the tree line profiles—

Like perforations in black paint—

Once nightfall hit.

We used discarded aluminum cans

To boil water for dinner

Over our campfire flames,

We snuggled up with

Hot stones in our sleeping bags

And tent,

And we continuously paused in awe

Over the idyllic spread of landscape

That was panned out

Before our very eyes.

No plan,

Just a leap of faith into the

Arms of time.

To truly make the most of

The time that is given unto us,

Do we simply find a balance between

Over-awareness and

Ignorance?

How is it that we can simply master an art of

Timely equilibrium?