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Ideas are born from thoughts and emotions
Nurtured in balance, they grow and mature..
With logic and caring applied in proportion
Ideas yield bounties of reason and love.

Take care that you never give all to emotion
Nor trust only to logic, not bending at all
Emotion leaves craters on scarred, empty landscape
And logic alone makes for cold, barren shores.

So facts are the products of reasoned ideas,

Pyramids crafted of logical stone.
Immortal because of their solid foundations
True facts then are timeless and bright to behold.

Not easily changed as are whims and opinions...
But often confusing... just words after all,
Make each of us choose what is true and what isn't
And some of us can, but most of us fall..

So whenever presented a fact for consumption,
Examine it closely for table and crown.
Opinions have foundations built over craters...
They crumble and never push pyramids down.

Opinion is merely the voice of emotion.
Varying, changeable, woven of straw
Which bends in the wind and floats with the current...
Ever changing with no thought to reason at all.

Belief is a separate kind of opinion,
Isolated from wisdom by one's self-esteem...

Thus a person who can't lift his face to a mirror
Makes excuses to others, as well as himself
He wants to believe he is something he isn't
He needs a small lie to convince someone else.

A belief then created, a servant of folly
The truth since forgotten, it stood in the way.
In the night an ice castle of beauty, deceptive...
Only puddles are left when sun brings the day.

While darkness protects you alone in your fortress
The angels of truth dare not venture your halls
Leave logic and reason outside on the doorstep...
Ignore it completely when the ice starts to thaw

But straw won't protect from the fire that is coming
The more you have gathered, the hotter the blaze.
And once it has started even night won't protect you.
No more than a fool with a star-studded gaze.

Hold firm your beliefs and protect your opinions...
And never consider the sense of it all.
Stay hidden away in your crystalline sculpture
The straw, though abundant, made very weak walls.
Beliefs may be shattered, but ever a dreamer
You blame someone else when your pyramids fall.

(I'm sorry the prose and the verses don't rhyme,
'Tho I wanted to do it, I hadn't the time.

With the jumble of words that I try to unwind,
it was trouble enough, just to meter the lines.

But I'd go back and fix it if I had a mind,
to learn about prose, and verses, and rhyme.)

Learn more about this author, Tom Burnett.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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