Contradictions in Human Thinking - a poem

Trapeze artists tend to contend with a lot minutia

as they toss, catch one another and return each other

to platform stages barely fit for a pair of feet.

So then why are we not set to hone our standards

for important duties they way we have for carnival

performers, who in societal keyways have no importance

in functions that are important to everyday life.

Yet, we continue to preach that we must live up

to words of parents, of God, of law, and say that we should

be better than lizard brain that gives us no contemplation

and helps us to survive. We, constantly told that

we are more than an animal kingdom but content

on repeating the mantra that we are men.

If we are men, and we are set in stone, as the squirrel

who contends with other squirrels to collect their acorns,

then why bother with arguments of free will, or divinity,

for we bark out words of nature, contributed to the function

of hormones of primary sex characteristics, but we want

to be chosen and placed here for superiority to the insects

that we ridicule and crush under foot, even though the honey

bee has more reason to be for this earth, than we do, to breathe

on this earth, but we claim our towering monstrosities are divine.

Trapeze artists are expected to be conditioned in their tossing,

and catching, but a president seems to be absolved of any discipline,

a man of seventy-something is able to be excused for behaviors

of lies told like a five-year-old who lies, for he is learning the world,

but man lies because he’s learned it gets him away. He can lie about

repentance and we buy in, he can lie about racism, sexism, and he can

lie about motives, and mock veterans, and the handicapped, but we excuse

him like we excuse the five-year-old. One of these things is not like the other.

If we as mankind, or humankind, can develop an understanding

that we are better than the rest of us, and hold that certain jobs

are only fit for some of us, and knowingly make sure we put proper

people in their positions, why do we allow our leaders to be jokes,

and allow our country to be run like a sideshow, with smoke and mirrors.

We determine swamps are bad places, but allow the leech to claim

he’ll drain it. What a puzzling thing we wrought ourselves and what funny

excuses we claim as we beat our chests like gorillas while we claim

to be, claim to be more than animals.