Evolved Or Created? Poem by Tom Courtney

Evolved or created
the same
I am an animated dirt clod
with a short and brutish life
Selfish angry and yet proud
My sanity become my inanity

10 billion years or a thousand days
the same
I cannot rise up beyond myself and touch another
I cry and die daily to live a better way
I cannot reconcile myself to second best
And I am furiously impatient

I search for strength in my weakness
and for friendships from my prison
I value information but I want relationship more

Sometimes I hate cool, stylish and charismatic
Because 98% of us aren’t
and the 98% of us who aren’t really are
and the 2% of us who are really aren’t

I want to be real
I want to make a difference
I want to give back
And am not sure that I know how
Or if I did that in fact I could

A crazy man
desperately trying to escape himself
wanting to make a difference
to give my own life meaning

Go to every cyclone
every earthquake, every hospital, every grave
and work, give, love, care, embrace
But know
know above and through it all

I didn’t do it for them
I didn’t even do it for us
I did it for myself
Yes, I did it for myself
And tell the awful truth
Finally
tell the truth

The truth?
The truth hurts
but
it beats fooling
myself