The Competitor

How ingrained

it has become,

to so fiercely compete

with one another.

The boxer who fells his brother

with a sickening blow,

lofting fist in godly triumph,

as he savagely scorns his stricken foe

Is but a symbol

of everyday dealings,

transactions

of unreal thoughts

and feelings.

Me, me, me and me

opposing very elements

of which I am made.

Raging wars

‘tween ‘haven’ts” and ‘haves’

‘believers’ ‘gainst the ‘not’s’.

oft in name

of personally invented gods.

Heirarchies.

Smouldering differences.

State against state.

Mate against mate.

Mindless judgments,

striving for edge,

over imagined opponent.

Attack and defence.

Computer games.

Child’s play.

Lowest prices,

bargains bizarre.

Monetary servitude.

Key performance indicators,

profits to the max

not what’s best for all.

Victim–victimiser both

on guard

lest someone-thing

stronger, cleverer, prettier,

more cunning still,

steal all.

And yet is not

each seeming win

also somehow lose?

Not exactly what’s been won-perhaps,

but loss of different hue.

Has not the pound of flesh I stole

somehow gone against the grain

and cost at least a pound from me

in heavy, repressed pain.

Of sensing somewhere deep within

a nagging, sub-atomic truth,

that every single thing and one is connected equal,

in the Mind of All There Is

And if I wrest

a pound from you,

I take it only

from myself.

But that pound unjustly took,

must sometime be accounted,

for the books must surely balance.

And, ‘till then remains

a debt unpaid,

but due for restitution!.

More fool I!

(Andrew Solomon – 2008)