SPELLBOUND

Site of car bomb explosions in Syria

latimes.com

I am spellbound by the fact
that a beautiful perfect mysterious earth
displays its beauties across its many lands
and, at the same time,
people who have forgotten 
they are human beings
go about the  business  
of killing other humans.

War is an oxymoron when placed beside
peace, religion and freedom
in the same sentence.

Bombs send blasts of ominous smoke skyward,
women and children fleeing in terror.
All over the earth,
the animals are disappearing,
the ecosystem is being destroyed.
We are fouling our nests 
and blaming everyone else
for the damage.
Waiting for everyone else
for the cure.

Someone, please,
break the spell
and topple us into affirmative action
on a global scale.
Wake us up from this nightmare
disguised as the American Dream.

For, no matter how fast or how slowly
we kill each other off,
none of us has yet had
time enough to love.

italicized words are Carilda Olivar Labra's
for the prompt at Toads: to write a piece inspired by her work.

After writing this, I plugged the documentary I Am (by Tom Shadyac) into the dvd player, and am amazed at the discussion. The question is "what is wrong with our world and what can we do about it?" 

"People have to substantially change their way of thinking, if we are to survive," Albert Einstein. 

"The ethnosphere is the sum total of all the ways that human beings have imagined the world," David Suzuki. 

I have only watched for a few minutes, and already have resonated with so much. Participants discuss which is the strongest drive of human beings: cooperation or domination. Indigenous societies view cooperation as the highest, and competition taken to its extreme is considered mental illness. In our society, competition is the strongest drive. Ha!