Ashes to Ashes

Let’s trace our paths back near conception

more precisely, a moment before.

At the start we’re the clay of perfection

to be shaped as we transit life’s door.

God will shape us as homo erectus

but our minds are left blank as a stare.

Apparently, God must expect us

to learn from the world while we’re there,

We begin by distinguishing classes

gaining clues from the creatures most near.

Those who feed us and powder our asses

and the “others”, whose worth is unclear.

Soon, we’ll ponder our ultimate purpose

but, for now, we’re content with our role

until cousins or siblings usurp us,

we rule all our world, on the whole.

Life’s reality tends, then, to shock us

when the self-serving rivals appear

first to poke us, to prod and then mock us

with clandestine kicks to our rear.

If we live through the toddler phases

we, with school’s paradoxes, make war.

We conform, don façades of teen crazes

then we graduate, lost, as before.

Come careers and a marriage and babies,

a child to distort all our own.

Though our mind is of questions and maybes

our disguises are settled in stone.

It’s the clueless now leading the clueless

a parade that is endlessly long.

“Dear, don’t look at the homeless and shoe less,

learn to do as I do to get on.”

We all choose our refuge, our haven,

a bias, religion or chore.

and then, sure as Edgar Poe’s Raven,

we begin to hatch versions of yore.

“If only my parents had taught me

better habits and sticking to goals,

but they loved siblings more and forgot me

thus my life full of questions and holes.”

“More to blame are my teachers and bosses

my government, husband (or wife)

but for them I’d not be counting losses

I’d be warm and content with my life.”

Ah, at last, comes the moment for leaving

and we give up our life with a sigh,

as the relatives count the ones grieving

and your money while faking a cry.

Thus our universe spins to the minute,

once again the primordial ball,,

with a bang, spills the contents within it

and “She” starts reconstructing it all.

Yes, a capital “She”, I must tell you

that the news about God is quite large.

Just before your departure for hell you

should know that Pandora’s in charge.