Four Billion Years
Four Billion Years
Four billion years of evolution,
Maybe more,
And we've come to this:
Abstractly desiring an intangible wad of green paper
That holds no intrinsic value—
Other than perhaps as a modicum of power and influence.
Four billion years—
And what have we accomplished?
We've burned down the rain forest
To make room for cattle farms
That are operated by colored people
That aren't paid enough to eat—
Yes, that's right, the white man still owns slaves—
So that we can grow morbidly obese,
Grease dripping from our mouths
Down the folds of fat that line our chins
To caress the curvature of our stomachs—
Circumference ever expanding.
We've made our children stupid,
Forcing them down the assembly line
Of public education; teaching them
To become disinterested in the world around them;
Telling them that what they like has no value
To society and that their lives lack meaning
If they lack surplus.
Our kids idolize the wealthy because they have things,
And things—I have been told—
Are more important than progress.
We're making oily bonfires in the desert
To illuminate upon our indifferences.
We destroy what we are told to destroy
Without considering the consequences,
Without realizing the dialectics we avoid,
The logic we could accrue from listening.
We believe a national identity
Is more essential than our relationship to species,
Thinking that we can only gain
Through our taking.
Four billion years,
Four billion years,
And we are looking at the end of the world,
Hoping for Rapture,
Praying that we go to heaven,
Granted a second life,
Because we've wasted the ones we've already had—
And wasted the lived of others.
Regardless if the end is coming,
Why don't we make the process of dying more comfortable?
Why don't we put the effort into saying we're worth
Another four billion years.
God, if you exist,
Would you extend our warranty because we're trying?
He wouldn't though.
We're not trying—
Or at least not hard enough.
Four billion years of evolution,
And people are asking to die at the end of the year.
If that's how we are,
We deserve it.
Let's not deserve it.
poem by Tim Stensloff
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Our Times
Our Times
13.7 billion years ago
4.5 billion years ago
3.5 billion years ago
200 thousand years ago
10,000 years ago
5000 years ago
3500 years ago
1800 years ago
500 years ago
50 years ago
One hundred years from now
Five hundred years from now
Ten million years from now
Ten billion years from now
We are where we are now
Where are we now?
Who are we now?
What will we be?
When?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A billion dollars every week for Iraq, $87 billion for Iraq. We can't get $5 billion for childcare over five years in welfare reform.
quote by Jim Wallis
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The truth, of course, is that a billion falsehoods told a billion times by a billion people are still false.
quote by Travis Walton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Flyng At Night
five billion years away
a planet turns,
turning a million years
this side of the planet
and my heart beats
each beats
a million years
the other side of another planet
the distance that shortens
the years
as we watch a foreign body
five billion years away
a billion years passed
a universe caught in time
an eagle flaps its wing
each flag
a million years pass
that side of the planet
time is where you are
it walks away from you
as you walk away from it
inspired by
Flying at Night
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
Ted Kooser
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.
quote by Carl Sagan
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.
unknown author
Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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World Energy Crisis
Supplying world energy needs is a great challenge of our time.
So as aspiring populations explode it would no doubt be a crime
Not to harness the atom, empower the waves, as we beckon the sun
To provide all peoples a chance to rise up and someday be someone.
Also power of the winds, along with landfill gas and fossil fuels
Will provide an energy hungry world with indispensable tools.
World population of one billion was not generated until the year 1804.
Today it takes only twelve years to add another billion or more.
By 2050 this growth will result in 8-12 billion and stupendous energy need.
So answers must be discovered everyday for this future world to succeed.
poem by Gregory Huyette
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A father and two sons run Adelphia. It's a cable company. And they took from that company a billion dollars. A billion. Three people - three people took a billion dollars. What were they gonna do, start their own space program? 'Let's send the monkey to Mars, Dad!'
quote by Lewis Black
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people.
quote by Samantha Bee
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.
quote by Chris Matthews
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Peaceable Kingdom
A waive toward the clearing the sky
All this time we're talking and sharing our rational view
A billion other voices are spreading other news
All this time we're living and trying to understand
Why a billion other choices are making their demands
Talk of a peaceable kingdom
Talk of a time without fear
The ones we wish would listen
Are never going to hear
Justice against the hanged man
Knight of Wands against the hour
Swords against the kingdom
Time against the tower
All this time we're shuffling and laying out all our cards
While a billion other dealers are slipping past our guards
All this time we're hoping and praying we all might learn
While a billion other teachers are teaching them how to burn
Dream of a peaceable kingdom
Dream of a time without war
The ones we wish would hear us
Have heard it all before
A wave toward the clearing sky
A wave toward the clearing sky
The hermit against the lovers
Or the devil against the fool
Swords against the kingdom
The wheel against the rules
All this time we're burning like bonfires in the dark
A billion other blazes are shooting off their sparks
Every spark a drifting ember of desire
To fall upon the earth and spark another fire
A homeward angel on the fly
A wave toward the clearing sky
song performed by by Rush
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame.
quote by Muhammad Yunus
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Chinese History
there is a tightness about the Chinese
a jar of wine, sealed and tied with the
help of one billlion hands
there is a tightness about the Chinese
a star twisting and jostling to win
your fancy among one billion
there is a tightness about the Chinese
a surname the weight of one billion tons
each wishes to shoot through the heavens
there is a tightness about the Chinese
five centuries of the rise and fall of civilisations
a dragon all claws, whiskers and fiery eyes
tidying and polishing its billion scales
so that they dazzle with power and excellence
there is a tightnesss about the Chinese
gunpowder all ready to blast through
crackers in a billion hard foldings
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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At the same time, Republicans are pushing a $70 billion tax package that will overwhelmingly benefit the most wealthy Americans and actually increases the deficit by $16 billion.
quote by Marty Meehan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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After all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generation of life.
quote by John Polkinghorne
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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66th Independence Day, India
Today's a day of jubilation great;
Let patriotic feelings fill your heart!
Let's think about the country's glorious past;
Let's work with zeal for upliftment of poor!
Let's shrug away our selfishness this day!
Let's toil for fellow citizens again;
Let's cage the corruption beast in a cell;
Let's love our brethren and the downtrodden!
A billion people need education;
A billion mouths need water and good food;
A billion need employment and shelter;
Let leaders do their duty with great love.
All Indians must be united and strong;
Our diff'rences of every kind must cease;
Love must be prime for nation and people;
All must work for the betterment of all!
Jai Hind!
poem by John Celes
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Seven Billion Reasons
Another baby born, another bushel of wheat
Another piece of land, for another family to eat
Another net is cast, another fish is caught
Another fire in the forest, another tree sought
Another bird flees, another bird gone
No home for the beast, diversity all gone
Crops in the amazon, Rivers clogged up
Flooding in cities, Seas on the up
Nature under pressure, Pollution the price
Shortage of wheat, Shortage of Rice
Temperature rising, Deserts expanding
Oil running out, the world is in doubt
War for resources, the west uses force
While the poor beg in cities
Victims of policies, Victims of atrocities
Seas that are empty, Bellies that are swelled
Mankind too many, Riots a plenty
The button is pushed, and humanity is hushed
The Earth is now empty, Heaven is full
And we are 7 billion reasons
For God to cry “Treason” ”Treason”
And the stars look on, silent
And galaxies die alone
And no one will know.
This place,
Where once, our babies did grow
But time will go on
And the earth is aglow
Just as it was,7 billion years ago.
7 billion today
Tomorrow more
What is the real figure?
For all out Nuclear War?
poem by Steven Cooke
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Just a few short years ago in the year 2000, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton administration, this country was running a surplus of $236 billion.
quote by John Spratt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Theory Of Earth First Life Forms
Science claims life on planet earth
has teemed thrived multiplied
diversified for millions of years
then when did earth life begin?
This is one of the greatest mysteries
still waiting to be scientifically unraveled
and the theory is our first life forms
were miraculous one-celled creatures
that appeared on earth about 3 billion years
ago through evolution or Transpermia?
It's life Jim but not as we know it know it?
poem by Terence George Craddock
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A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.
quote by James Lovelock
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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