Incompetent Kings

War: a tragic period of conflict that appears to occur within every single era of time. The real question is, "Why was war born into existence in the first place, and despite everyone's efforts to quell its malicious destruction, why does it still exist?" Some may answer that it is defend freedom, to put food on the table, to provide room for an ever expanding nation, for another nation's plunder.

Out of personal belief, the center of it all is driven by a philosophy so simple that even a child understands what it is, and that is the desire for want.

WANT

The villainous side of that belief is the simplest one of them all; those are the people who wage war for selfish purposes often do it for another nation's goods, for their land, maybe at times for its people. As for the benevolent side, only slightly more complex; those are the people who have something to protect or perhaps a righteous thing to gain: freedom, their families, peace, their homeland.

The bottom line is that war occurs in this world today because both sides want something, whether it is from their enemies or it is something they strive to protect. However, war doesn't just spring up out of nowhere, it requires someone to lead it.

Incompetent Kings

Of course, monarchy is a thing that has largely become obsolete now that what people call "democracy" has now become the popular government, but the politicians today are still largely driven by the same ambitions as would an incompetent king would. Hitler started World War II because of his own belief that his people were the dominant race. In the midst of all those speeches he proclaimed to the people, did he once state a fact that justified his insane ambitions? It's quite obvious the answer to that was no. The result: 60 million lives lost, and a tenth of them were the Jews they degraded to trash. Terrorists started the 9/11 incident, and for what? Because they hated the U.S.'s guts for giving freedom to people? What's not to like about that?

And yet, it is in everybody's homeland where they believe war is justified, and that their leader who charges into the war first is "competent," and that those who fight for a righteous cause as to defend their own belongings are "incompetent."

A challenge to everyone, look at 5 wars of your choice, and judge for yourselves who was the competent side, and who was the incompetent side. Think what you will.

The Beauty Behind the Lack of Beauty

There are too many people in the world who become fooled by the stereotype that all poetry has to be "beautiful" in order for it to be worth reading, or perhaps for it to even be considered poetry at all. The truth behind that is actually that sometimes it is the lack of beauty that actually allows a poem to communicate an even greater emotion within a reader. That in itself is what sets poetry apart from most other forms of literature, whether it's your dystopian novels that provide escapism into a world where a bow, arrows, and a quick reaction time make you a symbol of rebellion and hope, short novels that are riddled with hints that lead to a window into the heart of the author during the time they wrote the novel, or perhaps plays that are occasionally over-dramatized to force the tears out of the corners of people's eyes.

Shakespeare was a man who knew how to communicate the true beauty of "experience" to a reader, even without the beauty that is normally delivered through vivid and emotional adjectives. Of course, that never stopped him from writing Romeo and Juliet, but in the end, it is probably through the variety of methods he used to write literature that he was able to be known as one of the greatest known literary artists in all of history. Through simple concrete details he was able to immerse a reader into the landscape of the English countryside, as known in "Winter," where he is able to communicate a strange sense of pleasantness to the reader in the midst of the harsh cold. The reader is able to feel their warm breath thawing their fingers, smell the roasted apples cooking in the kitchen, and be relieved to know that someone is bringing in wood to make a fire to warm the home.

Given everything, poetry is not always beautiful as readers always expect it to be. However, sometimes it is the lack of beauty that creates an even greater form of beauty that makes poetry so appealing to people, one that gives people a perspective shown through the point of view of someone who actually feels everything currently happening. Through this, readers realize there is more to poetry than roses and pleasant smells described through words. 

Sometimes, it is far better to just feel it for yourself than just trying to read what happens.