Victims of Ourselves

Victims of Ourselves

We are children.
Refusing to grow up,
Refusing to grow past
the errors of nature and nurture.
Refusing to grow at all.

Slaves to "I want,"
Deep-seated thoughts and beliefs
so meager in our philosophy.

So we write ourselves a canon
to define our purported selves.
Sticking to those exact words,
Improvising only during rare measures
where safety is assured.

Or during the insane scramble,
when our wants have buried us,
and we're consumed by the desperate need
to claw our way back to the surface.

Afterwards, we pretend our clothes are not threadbare
and covered in graveyard mud.
We assume a role
dignified if transparent.
And make excuses,
For, after all, this could not be our fault.

We are children,
the center of our universe.
Unwilling,
perhaps unable to see
the harm our foolishness
has caused others.