#predetermination
Over half a hundred years
and still I journey on.
At times I'm left to wonder
Where all the years have gone.
Memories that hold the proof
that this life was really mine.
Reflecting as I sometimes do
was it fate or predestined line?
Did I make real choices
that took me down this path?
Or did some cosmic scheme
shape every tear and laugh?
Is all I am and all I've been
of unique and individual shape?
Or was I made to be like this
taking part in manufactured jape?
If some hand does guide it
and I be but actor in some play,
What point in this life I have,
for it to be played out this way?
Of course there is no answer
that I can ever be sure to know.
So I just blindly journey on
to wherever this line might go.
Random course or predefined
my day to day follows every bend.
And over half a hundred years,
I am so much nearer to its end.
Oct 16, 2023
Oct 16, 2023 at 5:52 AM UTC
Charlie crumpled up the script
that his mother left him as a note on the banister;
an ode to matronly passive-aggression
scrawled in haphazard cursive
on the back of a Meijer receipt when she was drunk.
While conducting a routine bedroom sweep
for any arbitrary evidence
to convict her son, yet again,
as the eternal family scapegoat,
Marilyn was far from pleased
to find his final disregard
of her bankrupt maternal instinct
clouded by inherited alcoholism
wadded up in his wastebasket.
Jaded by plot conventions, dodging foreshadow,
we scrapped our narratives and hopped in his car.
Untethered by destination, we drove through the rain
in the last hours to waste of a Sunday night.
Stopped at an intersection in an unfamiliar town,
he turned to me with an expectant smile:
“Where to now?”
With no surrounding traffic to rush our decision,
I glanced in both directions.
“Let’s turn left.”
“Where’s that lead?”
I squinted in the dark.
“Wherever the hell we’re going.”
Aug 31, 2015
Aug 31, 2015 at 7:32 PM UTC
We never think about the little details, which began our journey to this instant.
We cannot see the threads that have connected us all along from the beginning.
We have been slowly braiding these strings since we were born without noticing it.
We take for granted the hearts and minds of society, which mold us into today’s being.
We ignore the domino effect of one past event, even though it could have led us elsewhere if different.
We won’t ever know that one person could have altered everything in never-ending time.
We wonder how long and far our destiny goes back to when we finally met that specific human.
We don’t stop to thank the friends who leave and stay for making us open our eyes toward fate.
We forget the grieving of the beloved buried when you and I try to commemorate everyone.
We share a childhood flashback together, a memory once unaware of one another’s existence.
We fast-forward our documentaries expecting tight knots, unplanned outcomes, and made amends.
We experience normal behaviors and are left unsatisfied craving lucidity and astral projection.
We agree on being the original kids cast out with real issues and phobias who nonsensical teens mimic nowadays.
We will only ever hear a few stories out of billions of walking narratives in this loud and silent world.
We are shocked when we conclude that we have more stories with our friends than we ever did with our lovers.
We seek independence to do what we want and have to do unlike our old friends who sacrificed and settled early.
We remember everybody we didn’t get to say goodbye to and wish we can make-up one for each of them.
We want to succeed for ourselves and for our families who are unfortunately stuck with what they got.
We realize things are only getting harder as we get older, but in our youth, we were able to handle anything.
We observe the simplicity of firework explosions because we want to be neon bright and high on happiness.
We try, try, try to remain ourselves when euphoria is lost and give something new a chance for a first opportunity.
We balance out our emotions when we determine that whatever happens, it’s meant to be for self-improvement.
We are caught off guard when all memories, good or bad, are suddenly bittersweet at last.
We decide in the end that it is better to have closure and tie loose ends rather than live as strangers and dwell unfastened.
We hope to discover an entity or someone emotional and understandable like us to end the loneliness.
We continue to strive, to witness the ghosts of morals and lessons and defeat our demons of all sorts of flaws and mistakes.
We do not regret a single choice because the idea of freedom relieves us to arrive at the junctions.
We are tested with our best and worst days to show ourselves we are worthy enough to accept reality.
We keep growing bolder, stronger, and wiser, even when we feel the opposite, to know we are still alive.
We are grateful for the past, the pain and joy, because it guided us here to the forgiving present.
We allow ourselves to become untangled for vulnerability to trust again with the right, relatable bond.
We love and hate from start to finish, from the strands of the cosmos down to the fibers of our bodies.
We think it is strange when a lifetime collapses into a moment with an image but not necessarily.
We found peace in the morning night limbo above the void and life on a place where people find the answer to death.
We ultimately unearth ourselves from acting like fragments of the universe because we come to terms that we are the universe.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 3:07 AM UTC