When we think about the choices in our lives
When we fight and we bicker and become bitter
When we think there is only power or powerlessness

If we can realize that there is power and powerlessness
Then haven't we began to acquire consciousness
In that instance haven't we began the process of choice

That there is those who have not have given birth to this consciousness
To those who have only lived powerlessness
And know nothing else
Haven't you owed them part of your consciousness
That you have ceased to be one of them
Or your mere power has denied one of them

That there is no choice for them
Because they haven't birthed that consciousness
And if you choose power they'll remain powerless
Because within you there is no loyalty, right?
It is a choice predicated by an erroneous concept of self-preservation

It is a treacherous dichotomy; doesn't make sense
This is not an indictment of your desire not to suffer
Because surely to hold power would cease your suffering
But it is this type of power that thrives on the proliferation of powerlessness
This conceptual understanding of what it means to have power
That is not what we've come learn, but readily ascribe to

That a mind and body can cultivate power
That can be harvested, shared, communal
For the sole purpose of the survival of the other, not the self

That that can survive in this world is impossible
Its antithetical to the modes of production
In which our societies operate and thrive

How can workers begin to derive power from their collective efforts
How can workers' purchasing power equal the power of the production of their labor

How can any community in any corner of the world escape
The misanthropic missions of first world free trade capitalism

When will we reclaim our escaping humanity
When will we cease to keep feeding the system with our minds, our bodies, our labor

How much longer can we become fodder, scraps, waste feeding the machine
And don't think that you are safe when you have made it
When you have entered the circle of dominance
Because it is then when you will loose your humanity or die

It is at that apex of power that your presence becomes
Just as dispensable as that of the powerless
Because to maintain that circle of dominance
Requires a total conversion to misanthropy

The rigor with which your power will be required
To keep proliferating powerlessness will give no break
And when you become useless, it will replace you

So that we must realize that the modes of production
That we allow to exploit us
In powerlessness, or the semblance of power
Can never safeguard our humanity

How much further will we allow power to be concentrated
So that soon we ourselves, or our children won't have a choice
Won't have the consciousness of power just powerlessness

Pain is inevitable,
Suffering is optional.
Change is great,
But growth is awesome.
Crying means cleansing,
Believing is your decision.
We are all spiritual beings,
Having a human experience.
You can have fun in society,
just focus on what you need to do.
We all came here in great numbers
but when you leave it'll just be you.
So Remember PAIN is INEVITABLE and
SUFFERING is OPTIONAL.
CHANGE is
GREAT
BUT
GROWTH
IS AWESOME.
© 2013

SELFISH EDUCATION MINUS POETICAL WISDOM
MAKES THE WORLD LAME

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

Nothing is wrong with selfish education;
Career is an important part of a good life
Much of human life over the years
Is devoted to career acquisition
In oblivion of poetical wisdom
Philosophy does not make it any easier,ok
For apothecaries to remove a prostate gland;
Apothecarical education is long, arduous and dear in cost
Never temper it with apparent irrelevance
But poetical wisdom soothes the tools
Helps apothecaries to volite in dilemma
Poetical wisdom is essential for apothecary’s work
Without it; apothecary tells a mother-to-be
Your baby will be a dwarf dwarfishly
The apothecary explains the mother’s options yet in fault
Since it takes more than just knowledge of genetics
Since it requires an understanding of suffering,
Of disappointment and puerperal attachment
Apothecary tell a daughter but in sham; that
Your mother’s life support needs to be removed
It takes more than just knowledge of physiology
It too requires an understanding of emotional loss
A casualty room apothecary goofs to avoid despair
When faced with a baby battered nearly to death
By its own zinjathropus father
Such horror requires a faith in humanity
That cannot be learned in the selfish education
It’s not just apothecaries absolute
To benefit from a broader learning
It is but entire humanity
Studying drama would no help financiers
Devise capricious financial parasites
That doomed the world into financial mire
But, if they were familiar with Faust,
They may have thought twice about
The consequences of their vice,
Being able to sing from Shelley’s poems
Will not help politicians get elected
Carousing Ozymandias might make them more humble
And thoughtful about their accomplishments
Rupert Murdoch might not now be shaking his head
And whining; how I wish I new
Instead, he were to echo Shakespeare’s words
About how easy it is to be; done to death by a slanderous tongue,
I sing this poem in a crouch in the twilight
Around the world as my audience
Behold poetic eyebrows of my comrades,

A generation of humanity familiar poetical kingdoms
Of history, philosophy and literature is a wonderful vision
Doubts not that reading Goethe
And Shelley and Shakespeare guarantees wisdom
You are correct, kudos to you,

Reading, by itself, won’t make anyone a sage
Experience is a pertinent Florence
As Odysseus learns on his journey back to Ithaca,
Important lessons can only be learned the hard way
Through bitter experience, perhaps has a change,

Youth start out with ***, drugs, rock and roll
With experience they eventually emotions decadence
In calm appreciation that; nothing to excess,

Tragic exceptions like poor Amy Wine house;
Only serve to prove the rule, there is a problem,

Ergo, Experience alone cannot guarantee wisdom
Any more than reading books can
The lessons of life are only available
To those who are ready to learn them
If wisdom is the goal, then humanity must walk 10,000 miles,
To read 10,000 books
Said 17th century Chinese philosopher, GU Yanwu
Becoming wise requires more than set of adventures
But a cultured mind that is open and liberal
Readily able to absorb the lessons that experience teaches
Pasteur famously said that; Chance favours the prepared mind
Our job as learning humanity is to take his words seriously
Prepare mankind to learn from experience,

Humanity is to go beyond selfish education
To learn colours of hope in the poetical wisdom;
Life, death, tragedy, love, beauty, courage, loyalty
All of these are omitted from selfish education
yet, when it comes time to sum up our lives,
They are the only things that ever go places,

Catholic priesthood ever admonishes the flocks;
Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return
A salutary reminder of what we all have in waiting f
Like the Preacher in the Ecclesiastes;
We spend our years trying to find some meaning in our lives
It is easy to fall into the bottomless pit
Life is tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing
But before humanity reaches Macbeth’s conclusion,
We must provide with the poetical glory
Musing fortunately as all humanities is anxious
There is a thirsty for poetical wisdom
Which parochial selfish education cannot quench,

There ought to be a list of great poetical works
From east, west, north and south of the world
Globalectically Nursing poetic urge of the earth
With which every piece of humanity should suckle
In wisdom that Books have the power to convey wisdom,

From these poetical sources that humanity learn about love
And loss, about memory and desire,
About loyalty and duty,
About our world and love-bound universe
And about what it means to be a human being