Sunday, January 20, 2008

My reaction to two poems by Anas Almechatt: On Human Nature

Roses are red
By: Anas Almechatt

Roses are red, violets are blue
But if you look through my eyes, we’ll see the world as I do
Roses are black, and violets are gray
Humanity is in crisis, and there’s nothing nobody can say
Love is lost, pain is gained
An incredible fear growing within me is somehow sustained.
Standing at the edge, reluctant to jump, but I do I jump right into an ocean of absolute horror.
Seeing falling angels of God, murdering one another, taking pride in others insanity, we fell from the heavens, our souls shattered, and our heart now cold
We are an abomination, our being is dark as night, our essence once pure now corrupt
All there is to do now is pray, pray for the little girl who cries tears of blood, pray for all of the angels who’ve fell from Gods grace, pray that we all make it to paradise one day
Our foul nature, and our dreadful ways must and will be given up to God, willingly or unwillingly it will be given up. The new age is coming; we have already sworn it in. Satan will wear Gods crown, his sons and daughter will fest upon us. My fallen angels its time to fly with golden wings, its time to open our heart and let every drop of our evil ways ooze out, because if you don’t Satan will rule in the new age, and our descendants are doomed to feel his wrath.
Now the you’ll looked through my eyes, its time to gaze into my eyes, and see the pain in my skies, and see the hurt and the lies, both demons and angels are pulling on my souls like game of tug-a-war, my brain is melting, my hearts pounding, my lungs collapsing, oh my God please stop, looking for a way out, but they laugh, and stare as a struggle for dear life, and they whisper in my ear, my friend, hey my friend, you not going nowhere, I respond in a soft voice, yes I’m not going nowhere

poems #5
Open your hearts and welcome me into your souls
Let me show you how to live life to its fullest
Dismiss your demons, reconnect yourselves spiritually and emotionally
Time to awake, time to address our sins, time to let go of our hatred
We are my mother, my sister, my lover, my queen, and my everything!
Unlike diamonds we are not forever, blink once and you miss life, blink twice and miss heaven, a lifetime is as long as 125 years or as short as a minute, beauty is around us but lost in mans impurity, but I know where it is, really not hard to find, it’s in a woman’s eyes, in a woman’s touch, and in a woman’s love.
I’m Gods instrument, a tool for enlightenment, stop judging each other, and stop hurting each other
How many more people have to be killed until we realize this is our fault, we are blame, and things will never chance unless we make it
Look into your mothers eyes and see her overwhelming pain
Everybody needs to stop looking for the easy way out, for that fairytale ending, because there’s no such thing
Open your minds and stop being ignorant
When you look at me, do you dismiss me for my appearance saying to your self look at that retarded man trying to “act” like me, “be” like me, “walk” and “talk” like me, but you don’t comprehend that you’ll never be like “me”
All these thoughts in my head could drive you insane, I’m what you always wanted to be but couldn’t, we are all connected, every time somebody dies we lose a loved one, the heart never lies but the mouth does, searching for a girl but these girls are more ignorant then the guys because they don’t see me as I am, they see me as how the other people see me.
Don’t take my shyness for weakness, don’t take my appearance for idiotic ness, and don’t judge what you do not know, if you choose to come into my world I will teach you things we’ve never been taught before!

---
My reaction:
Wow! I read this and I think to myself "another brother down for the revolution". It's a struggle that has been going on since the beginning of mankind, and will continue to go on after we die. It's not Christian vs. Muslim, it's not America vs. Terrorists, it's not Capitalism vs. Communism, it's Light vs. Dark. Now we all have some dark in us, as you have pointed out, and it's up to us as individuals to keep up the struggle. I believe you can still be a good person and still sin, and not go to hell, just as long as you don't let your sins blind yourself to the Holy Illumination. It's like playing with fire. So we have to keep on growing, and shedding our sins when we obtain more and more Faith and Awareness. Nobody wants to be perfect, and you can't have pleasure without pain. But you can stick the Principle of Conscientiousness but still have fun, as long as it is in moderation and you don't get dependent on something to feel good- God is the Most High in Every1- "both demons and angels are pulling on my souls like game of tug-a-war," that describes it perfectly. Nobody wins, one side just loses more slowly (I got that quote from the Wire). You can't disassociate yourself from the evils in the world- I guess unless you became a Buddhist monk, but who wants that? The best you can do is lead by example and be the change you want to see take place in the world, by putting your heart into it. We can't save everyone. Jesus tried to save everyone, but not everyone wanted to hear it. People have to learn on their own without being forced.

"Everyone is connected". It is so true. That knowledge is cause for Responsibility. We fear what we don't understand, and hate what we can't conquer. We all just aren't on the same level. We either sell ourselves short, worry ourselves to death, act like we're better than our fellow man, or use our fellow man as machines to please us. Judgment is so shortsighted, hypocritical and arbitrary, but what's worse is Assumptions/Pre-Judgments- I mean, we don't know what's it's like to be a certain person, so we Conceive of Unreal rules that we impose into the situation. But it's all speculation based on Imagination. The Truth is only known through Experience, yet we say things based on our own limited lives/fields of knowledge. If we took the time to sit down with someone, break down those walls of Self-Imposed Rules, UnLearn what we have learned, then we're getting somewhere. But who wants to take the time to do that? Not many people are Patient and feel the have the Time. It's this damn materialistic, consumer society that worships Money and Time and Self, as if that were the Holy Trinity. Fuck that. What's important is Social Cohesion in the Illumination that we are all Sacred Beings- God is in all of us. Not only can this Fact produce Respect for Self, Others and Environment, but it also produces Faith, Positive Inspiration and Beauty.

I also love your lines:"we are not forever, blink once and you miss life, blink twice and miss heaven""I’m Gods instrument, a tool for enlightenment"
"Everybody needs to stop looking for the easy way out, for that fairytale ending, because there’s no such thing/Open your minds and stop being ignorant,"
"The heart never lies but the mouth does,"
"Don’t take my shyness for weakness, don’t take my appearance for idiotic-ness, and don’t judge what you do not know, if you choose to come into my world I will teach you things we’ve never been taught before!"
These lines ranged from clever and insightful to simple/straightforward and personal/powerful...I was either "oh shit, that's deep, new and real" or "oh yeah, I know what that's like, I've experienced that too, it's so true".
God definitely gave you a gift with words! Keep it up! I think this is the best stuff you've written so far.

2 comments:

jom said...

Deepness. All of it. I know what you mean. Getting pitted on one side or the other of an argument can often be the result of our own wild human natures, and it takes much pruning to supress them. I remember Hillary was it? She made a statement similar to a line I heard in Clancy's Clear & Present Danger 'you should never make important decisions when you are upset. We as humans invest so much of our emotions into the temporary things of the world that we are so susceptible to hatred and opposition as a result. Some folks seem to love being on the far end of an opinion seeing that view as more utopian in their philosophy.

In realizing things from a righteous perspective, extremism makes the 'porridge of life too hot or too cold.' what is right often comes as a balance between many post-modern human philsophies



anyways...DEEPNESS, and keep it up

Shep said...

Man, regular emotional arguments are bad, and I'd have to say drunken arguments are worse. Have you ever seen one? Like, verbally, how can you win a drunken argument? You're just a ball of emotion- there can be no rationality. No one is really hearing the other one. And if you’re gay and trying to convince a straight person that homosexuality is not unnatural, it’s nearly impossible sometimes. I spent two hours last night trying to explain the difference between natural and unnatural, but I don’t feel like I convinced anyone, just because we come from such different emotional standpoints on the issue. Who am I to say that your beliefs are wrong because you’re just spitting back stuff the status-quo wants you to believe? Well, I try to be the scholarly voice of reason, but it shatters your ideology as well as tears at the very fabric of your existence…

I mean, every emotion is founded because they are real instincts, but you have to be able to transcend the emotions and look at the bigger picture in order to really use your brain. Appeal to my heart and I might cry, but later on, when the tears are gone, I am gonna ask myself what the hell I was crying about. What was the meaning of that experience? Was it irrational? Should I base my beliefs upon that feeling? Should these beliefs be universally applicable to everyone? I was watching a Ron Paul video on youtube yesterday where it spliced images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ron Paul. It almost made me cry. But am I going to vote for Ron Paul just because of that? No, I have to not fall into such a trap. I need to actually find out what Ron Paul’s policies are. Governments do this to- they use fear-mongering as propaganda to scare us into supporting policies. They say “it’s us versus them, do or die, freedom versus hatred, good versus evil”. What they fail to mention is that the same thing they find irrevocably bad about their enemy are the things that will tear themselves apart. They just want to control and conquer what they fail to understand. Also, if you have some emotional stake in something, you become overly biased and full of irrational fears that make you unfit to deal with it by holding it at arms length and allow you to have a cool head about it. Giving Bush Jr. the presidency after Saddam had an assassination plot on Bush Sr. was just asking to go back to Iraq and putting down Saddam for good.

And also our sexual instincts can get in the way of fulfilling our souls. I’m not against sex or anything, but I feel like a sex-o-holic at times. I feel caught in some vicious cycles of anticipation. I know it’s easy to fall into being a slave to base desires. I used to be a stoner, and then I lived only for sexual gratification and power relationships. It’s so easy to get hung up on temporary

When it comes to beliefs, the only founded belief is one that has been questioned up and down. We need to realize the difference between an unanalyzed emotion that may be the result of propaganda, social conditioning, vicious cycles, irrational fears, power relationships and manipulation, ego-tripping, high-sex drives that make us weak and unfocused, etc and emotions that are healthy, such as compassion and empathy, love and hope and caring. But even these positive emotions can be harmful. If you care too much you bear the weight of the world on your shoulders and feel other people’s pain on top of your own. There is also a difference between helping the right way and helping the wrong way. If you try to help someone and don’t understand what you’re getting into, you can end up hurting the person you try to help.

It must be the high, because I've felt that high before, that keeps us investing our emotions in the temporary things in the world. I'm glad you brought that up. I admit I gladly get in line some times to satisfy my lust for life, but I always know what I'm doing, and how if it ever lets me down, it's my own damn fault for getting caught up in temporary satisfaction, when the happiness I can always count on comes from the unviersal truths.

What I'm beginning to learn now is that I don't want my legacy on earth to be "the guy who smoked so much weed" or "the guy who knew how to get his kicks" or "the guy who was friends with everyone" or "the guy with the best taste in music" or "the ever-silly guy who says the craziest things"...Those prides are nice, but I'd rather be known for something lasting; something that captures the highest idea of me.

I'll have to check out what you alluded to by reading some Tom Clancy; by the way, who said that about the "porridge of life"?