Complaint

Faith in the possibility of self control
Is the fundamental human madness
That enabled our cultures to evolve
To control us, to make us both
The masterful destroyers and remakers
Of all ecosystems and also the most
Agonized beings on the planet. Pah!

We are slaves. We were freely helpless
And now we have only shame. No,
Probably we were never freely helpless,
Only helpless without knowing, without
System. Or that's wrong as well. Let it go.
What we are now is strangely deluded.
Culture's gift has been to let us become

One within greater and greater pools
Of skills and information, now oceanic.
Along the way we evolved partial
Immunity to what those deep seas tell us.
Had we not, the feed-forward process
Would have ceased, as perhaps it did
In some of the cousins we assimilated

And annihilated. Now we are to truth
What cetaceans are to salt water.
We can dive, dive deep and long,
And hunt and thrive, even sleep
With half of our mind open. But we can't
Inhabit the deep entirely. We surface
For lies and one of the first gulps

Of mistake we take, all the way down
Into the empty pits of our hungry lungs
That burn for nonsense and narrative,
Is the sweet belief, sweet poisonous relief,
That we can take responsibility for what
We do and thereby what becomes of us.
Somewhere facts like osedax wait our falls.