More

By: Karina Makarova

Each step we take is another recipe for disaster

Planted in our brains, is the constant demand for

More

Building, capturing, changing things, we believe we are superior

Destroying, destroying, destroying

Out of everything we’ve made, all we’ve achieved was a big, fine mess

This mess ain’t no crystal stair

So our atavistic desire grows to keep doing –

More

We act like falling stars, breaking, shooting towards earth

When really we’re just a speck of dust that flew right off that space stone

And landed on a mountain peak,

Unseen and incomparable to the great forces above it

We are the shadows of universal darkness, covering the earth with our inventions

And though our eyes are stabbed by the flash of our own light

We still continue to take over and want

More

Rationale:

The free-verse poem “More” by Karina Makarova is a piece of literature focusing mainly on the theme of humanity vs. nature or the way humans take the environment/the world they have for granted. The inquiry question; “Why do humans do the wrong action even when they know it’s wrong” is answered and represented throughout the author’s poem, as evidenced by the verse; “Building, capturing, changing things, we believe we are superior”. Humans tend to blindly destroy the nature around them because they feel they are superior, immune to the things that are clearly much greater than themselves, and though they can see what is being destroyed; “All we’ve achieved was a big, fine mess”, they still believe they are “falling stars”, that nothing can possibly get in their way of achieving what they want, just like how stars can’t be stopped from falling, they continue until they reach their destination; “…our atavistic desire grows to keep doing”. This is also represented in the symbolic imagery, the human is carelessly holding planet earth in his hands, but shows no worry or care towards the fact that it and his hand is on fire (probably because he is who set it in flames). Karina refers her poem to the video “Man” by Steve Cutts because of the way it demonstrates their generation. The man in the short clip is transforming everything and constantly moving forward, or in other words; refuses to stop, he has the “constant desire/demand for more”.