To Those Who Have Abandoned the Human Race:

[pearlquartz17]

To those who have abandoned the human race,
to those who've given up, I say: look back.
Look back to men who gave the flame of hope
to creatures numbed by despair--their fellow men;
look back to the great minds of aeons past,
see how their works gave men a chance to improve,
to ripen in the gilded light of Progress
and reap the fruits thereafter. Do not these men
fill you with that same hope that fueled their brethren
to fare forward on seas of unknown futures?

Only reality exists, you say.
No happiness, no dreams, no liberty.
Only enslavement, automatic and
inevitable, is there for each man to succeed
his worn-out superannuated brother.
If such was Mankind's sole predicament
where would the Artist be? His soul's rebellion
would be destroyed the moment he stepped forth
from childhood to adulthood. Yet we have
painters and poets, singers and novelists,
all denizens of Earth who broke the mold,
who grasped the jaws of life's supposed machine
and rent it till it broke.