Headlines Poem by Marshall E Gass

Beneath the dark foreboding heavy print there sits
a sullen moment when the worlds problems are inked
in black lined language that skittles across the page
in a hurried beat informing
all who would care to read
how the world is shaping itself to explode
in the fireplace of disagreement on such things
as land and water and elements and boundaries
and rituals of culture and creed
that caused the great divide between
location and dislocation.

The day that barter was invented the troubles
started and multiplied for all. Enough was never
but invasion of another's territory was ingrained
in the psyche of all man, irrespective.

To travel and take by force was inbuilt into the minds
fences and protection was guaranteed to all
through evolutionary dynamos of the inner
workings of a space and time that kept all people
in a society of linked cobwebs through social structures
that tightly bound them into networks.

Once the unwritten laws of social structures were tested,
it let loose the insidious desire to take
without asking what was rightfully not yours.
The birthplace of all who ascended the throne
of comfort through the discomfort of others
can be traced to this malady.

Stay within your own blessed boundary.
Stay within the headlines of decency.

Author Notes
The Territorial Imperative drives all mankind.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.