The Wall, by Muttering Madzub

The Wall

I remembered my time in West Berlin and the impression of the Wall that has subsequently been taken down. I am not so sure that the real divisions of human beings are so easily removed.  The wall was an idea -- self-centered dream that is the self.


The wall stands and falls each day
The slow death of human arrogance raised
Blighted skyline of grey lifeless matter
scrawled with garish graffiti to hide dark thoughts inscribed with suffering

Cries for freedom muffled in concretions of effluvia
Children played as guard towers loomed
Protecting malignant ideals from malevolent excess
Only to punctuate the obvious departure of reason and compassion

East and West in divisive struggle
battle for supremacy over shadows
Memorials of long past wars
encased in old temples of blood and stone

Battle scars of human ruins that chronicle defeat and victory
Does victory exist without defeat?
Do victors that stand with feet on the throats of their defeated
only live to die another day with their foes looking down upon their overthrow?

Victory and defeat, death and life, oppressors and oppressed, liberators and the liberated,
all subjected to endless toil
Serpentine divisions slither through barren streets
that coil and recoil in the horrors of their own minds

The wall that came down
is forever inscribed on the landscape of human consciousness
The wall only exists in human minds
until freed from self-centered delusion

Where grey pall once dominated the night sky
The daylight illumines vestige horrific memory
New generations carry forward the ancestral genes
That are rooted in ancient battle cries.

Will we ever forget? Should we ever forget?
Being with horror and delight –life as it is
teaching liberating us from our selves
Compassion and loving kindness remains.

Sag mir wo die Blumen sind….
Where have all the flowers gone….