Life: Its Disappointments and Questions

Life folds our dreams into faded roses, spoiled milk, dear-Johns, a piercing “no” to our deepest hopes.

We come as conquerors. We crawl, then walk, run, and even climb, skip, and jump.

  We put words together, then sentences, sonnets, and songs. We write love letters, resumes, condolences, and then someone writes our obituary.

  We seek love and find bruises and abandonment.

Neon, but we get headaches.

Stars, but they are beyond reach.

 Eyes dim, eyeglasses, contacts, implants sustain until they eventually close.

           Mouths, full of teeth, jokes, and words of love fall quiet.

           Sleek bodies bulge with beauty, appeal, and sex wrinkle, fade, exhaust, decay, and silently slip away unnoticed.

          Resist! Exercise, beautify, face-lift, weight-lift, self-help, meditate, but the dust claims all.

We come as conquerors but leave as the conquered.

Is there nothing else? Nothing to give shape to our meaningless life?

Can death be tamed by a lesson? An explanation? A philosophy? A stiff-upper-lip?

Is there a song of hope for the tearful? Is there an answer to death? Is there comfort in oblivion? Or in a universal consciousness, which has no knowledge of me?

Can despair give birth to laughter? Can death be rebuked?

You may not have the answer, but do not kill the question!