We live and decide, sometimes
decisions above us somehow,
making themselves as we powerlessly
inch around where others have
often gone before us.
We do the thing we dream or see,
but from where did the dream come?
Did it come from good or evil? Man or
God? Devil or angel? Is the thing we
do good not just for now, but eternity?
Where do we want to be when we
give up the earthly fight becoming
Spirit—all the love, genes and things
we ever did in the air, our legacy?
Riding a motorcycle, throwing up
devil horns, playing it all loud,
drinking a flammable liquid, taking
a drug to alter our state, acts of
desperate high, don’t forget loose
sex that risks disease…
These are for our moment, not
forever, and get us by until
some lives do just that, they
“get by” and defer on big decisions
until “later.”
Sometimes later fails to arrive,
and we suddenly let a doctor decide.
We take the drug, do the thing told,
because the alternative is original
thought, which has less roadmaps,
we could get lost—
I’d rather die with this doctor I know
than the unknown curve in wild,
unfettered nature.
One finds strength in numbers,
looks around at dollars made drinking
“what he’s drinking,” doing what
they’re doing, add some job security
with your mayonnaise and you got
a pretty manageable sandwich…
But the soul… “Dust thou art to
dust returnest” was not spoken of
the free. And we all are, so watch
your step because sometimes you
get just what you asked for, ma’am
and sirs.
That shiny car… guzzling gas and loud.
That bright new bike, gaining roads
at higher speeds, don’t crash, I lost
a friend that way. A six-pack of beer,
so exciting when we skip studying
what’s in it, C2H5OH ethyl good
for rockets, but us?
You can dazzle in the short term or
deny your highs to live out a long,
meaningful, helpful life toward Peace.
If you want war, have it. Be loud, live
fast and know the blaze of glory
is in the eye of beholders, absent you,
if you die young.
It comes back to the old wisdom about
honoring your parents. If you
want a long, good life, honor those
people who brought you.
If you love your anger and self-pity
at your hard times so much, refuse
to forgive and believe in a power
greater than you, spit on your
parents’ advice and memory
because “they were bad,” you have
made a choice, own it and good bye.
Me, I’d rather sacrifice my passion
a bit, have and exude Peace instead of
playing around with this life dishonorably
and die.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 