Past

The past mocks me because it has no bearing
on the present; I was never a pretender
to any throne in this life however
I feel as if I have sustained
great loss; everyone in
my parents generation
is gone by now;
family friends
are only
memories
their children
are not friends
with my children
in fact I don’t even
know their names or
locations; we have no
continuity, no community
except virtual online; modern
life seems to be an endless series
of starting over and reinventing yourself
until the day you die, unless your mind gives
out first and then you live in the past while your
care taker explains patiently again and again that
your spouse is not coming home tonight because they
died 20 years ago to the day and so you may well live to 99
but what will be the quality of your mind and your old bag of bones
with more wrinkles than even God can count; I always believed that
love could conquer all until you finally showed me otherwise and even
the presumed innocense of children is belied by the cruelty and bullying
they are capable of right Peckinpaw; give me the darkness so I may know
the light, wizards and witches and poltergeists frighten the living day lights
out of me so I may know that altered state again where I can see inside
anyone’s mind and know the colors of their soul and where their
goodness hides, is it too much to ask of the universe to send
me a teacher well versed in the other world beyond our
five senses or must I wait to be slaughtered like a
sheep, here we are so technologically advanced
we can split atoms and send probes to other
galaxies but we rely on ignorant priests
to lead us to God which they can’t
for religion is not found in books
but in your soul made free
by any number of means
including ritual, fear,
near death or
whatever
means
it takes
to shake
you out of your
perceptions of reality
we live by conventions
1000 people looking at the
same event will have 1000 different
interpretations and when the Prince of
Peace said know thyself it was not your ego
but a much larger entity from which we are all estranged