Vacant Chairs

A back-room dweller,
nervous hands in his pockets,
seeks his acceptance.

Cracked

They said he'd cracked,
like a jar in the wind,
ajar to within.

Grumbling gears in an attic of a mind,
cranked with the resiliency of an old steam engine,
chugging along.

Muddy cigar for the failures,
basement couch for the come-backs,
after being knocked off a hundred times,
the podium has never had this many scratches,
climbs back up every time,
but gallows are never very accommodating.

Reproduce

The basis of life is reproduction. We can come up with a million different complicated and subjective opinions on the classification of something as “life”, but in my mind the sole equalizer has and always will be reproduction. If an organism can reproduce itself then it is considered living, and consequently all living things have a sensible want and need for reproduction. To propagate the continuation of it’s species, to see the universe dwell with creatures of it’s own genetic base it the ultimate inner desire of every “living” thing. Humans are no different.
Everything we do, every action we partake in has the ultimate goal of reproduction. When we socialize with other humans we reproduce through our ideas, continuing ourselves through the continuation of our thoughts. When we pursue our creative talents, we reproduce through remembrance, through the immortal recognition of skill. When we have kids, we reproduce in the most accepted definition of the term, through our genes. But a bloodline is not the only way our cells see fit to reproduce, take for example the basis of a lot of human architecture.
Buldings, the bi-pedal reflections of the human anatomical form, you won’t see any sideways buildings because humans are built to be upright. Filled with arteries of hallways carrying blood vessels of employees to their destined local. Each office working like an organ, working to carry out it’s function and coordinating with other nearby offices to get the job done faster, the organ systems of the business world. Great monuments of human architecture, the Pyramids of Giza to Stonehenge, all a reflection of the human anatomical form. Hell, the NY Stock Exchange could even be considered the Hippocampus of the business world.
All our thoughts and ideas come from cells, and being what they are they combine to their ultimate soul purpose, divide. The human form is just another cell, aiming to reproduce in every way it sees fit. With the tools of a combined form, the human form, at it’s disposal the power of the cell to reproduce has lifted from genetic material to raw data, from actual physical nuclei and chromosomes to the blueprints of these organelles played out upon the larger state, the world stage. Every building, every idea, every action; all we want is to be remembered, all we want to do is reproduce.

Roulette of Life

If you’ve ever been to a casino, there’s no doubt you’ve took a peek over at the roulette wheel. Now besides being a completely horrid casino game to put money on I’ve also thought of it as being a good metaphor for life. The reds and the blacks, the ball caught in the wheel’s crevice, jumping and hopping at the wheel’s whim, and most importantly the wheel spinning faster and faster until it’s own motion becomes it’s demise. Life is a funny thing, about the only thing predictable about it is that it has a beginning and an end. We never know where we’re going to end up or how we’ll get there, and the best we can do is place our bets on the most likely scenario. Whatever we do we’re still at the mercy of the spinning wheel, still stuck in the ups and downs our life gives us. Like the roulette ball jumps when it reaches a bump, we only act as our environment forces us to.
Psychology tells us there’s about a 1/3 of a second delay between a thought being constructed in the sub-conscious and it’s transfer over the consciousness barrier. Essentially, this means an idea is actually formed 1/3 of a second before we “think” it. The smartest part of ourselves Is the part we have relatively no access to. Each decision we make is not really a decision at all, but instead a sub-conscious conclusion reached after a survey of all the past outcomes in our life. If you’ve bet heads on a coin toss for 50 tosses and lost every single one, then it doesn’t take a wise man to understand your next bet should probably be on tales.
If you don’t believe in destiny then consider this: every moment of your life is determined by every moment passed. If violence has always given you the desired outcome then your most likely to use violence next time there’s a problem. In life there are no 50/50 choices, because the years of life experience we’ve encountered always tips the scales in favor of one choice. And as machines of logic and reason, our brain always picks the choice more probable to succeed. You might have seen someone do something completely pointless and damaging, completely throw their life away in a moment of bad decision. You think to yourself “What the hell was he thinking to go out and do something so…stupid”. Well, I hate to break it to you, but no one makes a decision if they honestly think it’s stupid. Either they’re forced into it or their past decisions have led them to believe that the benefits of doing said stupid act will outweigh the risks, or in other words, they make a rational decision. Destiny is very much real, but not in the sense that most people make it out to be. We never think that 1 plus 1 is “destined” to equal two, it’s just the sole outcome of two different factors. As such we never think a kid who grows up in a horrible crime-plagued neighborhood is “destined” to live his life in jail, but truth is that if he never encounters that one deciding good influence, that one inspiring person or compelling speech, then the negative influences will outweigh the positives and 1 plus 1 will end up equaling two.

Fruitless Murder

Humans have a truly odd thinking on the topic of life, on one side we value it as either some kind of god-given miracle or some kind of one-in-a-millionth atomic interaction, but on the other we only value it when it’s in a form we can hear and see. To this extent I’m going to go out on a limb and say that vegans are the most elitist, brainless, and self-glorifying idiots to ever hold a picket sign. Sure, there are places in the world where livestock is brutally slaughtered, and kudos to people trying to humanify the taking of life. But sure enough we are more heartless then we think, and take life much more brutally on a daily basis and often on a much larger scale. Sure carrots and cranberries might not have a mouth to scream or eyes to reflect their suffering, but they are also just as alive as the chickens and the cows. Life feeds on life; it’s how it’s always been and how it will always be. Organic creatures need organic creatures to survive, and everything that goes into our mouth was once alive and screaming , struggling and begging as it saw it’s brothers being taken one by one, as the hand that gave it nourishment hovered above, as it let out a mouthless cry of terror before being devoid of it’s life. The slaughter of livestock is only given more credit because of our own innate fears, and when we look into the eyes of the lambs awaiting slaughter, when we look into those eyes so unknowing and unaware of the reckoning to come, we see in there somewhere our own terrified expressions. Perhaps when we swat that mosquito off our arm or squash that ant that somehow made it into our house, we can stop and think. Is this really necessary? Was it to much work to let it crawl onto a newspaper or wrapper and let it on it’s way outside the window? As ridiculous as it sounds, that spider might have been a son, a father, a brother or a friend that you just killed. We seem to know exactly how other creatures must think and feel when we honestly know so little, maybe the cries of pain of the apples and ants are falling on deaf ears. We might not be able to see their pain, but sure as hell there is no living organism on this planet that doesn’t suffer when its life is slipping away. It’s a given that life must feed on life to survive, but that is no reason to not value any life but human life as precious. So spread your pesticides and feast on your crops, but never take a life unless you absolutely have to, lest one day you become the harvested.

Go Do It.

This is not going to be another post on philosophical ideals or psychological babble, it’s going to be something that’s been said a million times but somehow still seems to surpass that somewhat significant piece of gray matter between people’s skulls. As much as I hate to judge or generalize, I’ve begun to learn there are two kinds of people in this world, the ones who get it done, and the ones who sit back and watch. Times are gone when hard work was a inherent feature of men, and now effort seems to have become a commodity present in a select few. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it damn sure wasn’t built by people sitting on their asses and saying someone else would do it either. If there’s one thing that seriously pisses me off, it’s the fact that lazy people are more willing to make excuses and point fingers instead of admitting that they simply don’t want to do it. “I can’t” simply translates to “I’m not willing to put forth the effort”, and I’m not talking about flying but for god’s sake completing a spreadsheet by 5am doesn’t exactly require black magic. Honestly, if you only live once why not at least try to make worth of it, instead of living a life of mediocrity and unfulfilled desires? If it’s been done before then you can be damn sure you can do it to, and if it hasn’t been done before then it’ll just take a bit longer. People seem to think that if some “expert” hasn’t achieved it yet then there’s no way they can do it, but forget that we all have different minds, different ways of approaching the same problem, and just because two people have the same information doesn’t mean they’ll come to the same conclusion. Go out and find a cure for the common cold, find life in the cosmos, and discover the best cure for a hangover (NOT coffee). This world is yours for the taking, as long as you can honestly believe it is.

Herding of the Masses

There is a disease in our species
A bacterium that feeds on faces of the weak,
A spreading paradigm of sickness and disease.
Puncturing greatness and confidence leaks.
There is a insecurity among our species,
A herder tending to his sheep,
A continuous need to follow,
Abandoning the need to be.
There is a meek shade of gray,
Staining the people while they sleep,
Loneliness with other colors,
To be content amongst the weak.
There is a set of wings amongst our species,
Forced closed and weighted down,
Feathers that speak of revelation,
Are shed in heaps throughout this town