Life too short? Nah—too long, too hard, bereft,
Meaningless. Climbed a pinnacle? Look down!
Fell into a dark abyss? Peer up. Deft?
Fond of slick theory? See our clownish
Goals for what they are—forays, fueled by blood,
Greed, passion—blows we strike to rise above
Unruly hordes, the rank, dank human flood
Raging between us and what most we love.
We lie, we lure, we obfuscate, pursue
Esteem, wealth, power, and respect—deface
Abe’s pyramid, those fundamental truths
Saint Maslow1 taught—there—listed at its base—
The absolute essentials: life’s main bliss?
Food, sex, sleep, and a place to shit and piss.
(2/28/09)
1 In a 1943 paper, the psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) proposed a hierarchy of human needs, depicted as a five-level pyramid resting on the fundamentals that support and define the human condition—“breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion.”