Duality

A poetic look at man's chaotic nature.

I once inquired a friend as to what it means to be man.

How are we different, what makes us wonderful, what was the plan?

"We have a soul" he said "Created in the shadow of the divine."

Yet I know that the world around me is anything but sublime.

"So Tell me" I replied "if that is true, why are we so unholy?"

He said "Man is great as well friend, don't judge the evils solely."

At first I pondered this statement, I doubted its truth.

It seemed so wrong even to one of my youth.

But maybe my friend was right...to an extent.

Could we really be opposing forces? Contradict?

As my brain pondered the problem at hand

I began to picture every state of man.

People who are somber, yet at the same time glad.

People who are respectful to some, to others mad.

People who are envious of you, yet better than me.

People who lye entrapped while others run free.

And my thoughts did not stop there.

How could some have hard skin and some fair?

How could I be "black" and my friend "white?"

How could some be so violent yet still in the right?

The more I thought about it, the less I understood

About how such "divine shadows" could renounce their godhood.

We kill each other, we conquer, we destroy, and we steal,

yet...we save others, we protect them, care for them and heal.

Humans heal the very wounds that we had inflicted,

and then it hit me. My thoughts had just shifted.

We are neither negative nor positive, but somewhere in the middle.

A force of transformation, shoved into mortal bodies little.

The body but a harbinger for the steady change of man.

A vessel of chaos holding power within our hands.

Not only can we change and contradict ourselves

But we have the power to affect nearly everything else.

Space and time if we so please.

The earth itself bows to our needs.

We shape it, we grow it, we determine its fate.

Joyful happy rulers, ruling with an unbeknownst hate.

And we just keep going, bringing joy and strife,

Both villain and hero in this game we call life.

Playing at god in the blue and green sandbox of our birth.

Told to rule over the land in which we call earth

With the iron fist, not of oppression, but liberty

To change life as we will it, to define civility

And ultimately set the rules of our own reality.

All because we were given the gift of duality.

I thought about this, and with my head held high

I walked out of my home, greeted by the starry sky.

With the nature of man, and the progress we have made

I did not know if this world should be destroyed or saved.

In the end I decided that saving it is none of my concern.

For though man is chaotic, there is still so much more to learn.

Author's Note

I think the start is a little rough and I'm not quite sure how to fix that, but once it gets going it gets going.