Self-worth

Pitiful obsequiousness

Craving, noticed even less

Some are easy souls to love

The kind I am not worthy of.

Our Share of Luck

One’s fortune, be it good or bad

Lies in the future happy or sad

But the type of luck you actually get

By fate itself isn’t always set

Personal greed and mean self-thought

Can often bring a reward of nought

But do some good, as along you go

Then in the end some profit may show

For fellow travellers will mostly see

A different view to you and me

Other lives shaped by a different past

Do not judge, its not yours to cast

Unique roads bring you both just here

Now part of the journey you may share

Think which paths you might choose

If made to walk a mile in their shoes

A nod, a wink, some succour lend

Before your tracks break round the bend

Then later, if falling by the way

‘Let me help’, a stranger may say.

How and Why

Was it something we did

Was Karma involved

The answer is hid

The questions not solved.

Nature’s way

One each of countless seeds and a thousand eggs

blindly, in silent, deliberate serendipity

forging mind and body to a particular, though unknown patent

using eon-aged star stuff

bequeathed by the cosmos

to form a life.

Wanting

Happiness and fulfilment

Two precious, coveted goals

Promising contentment

But reached by tortuous paths

That cross only fleetingly

in the hearts and minds of men.

Depression

Tormented, rain-soaked branches, heaving,

beckoning leaden, clashing, threatening clouds,

madly, helplessly, at stormy whim,

weeping downcast, staccato, prickling drops,

drumming loudly, poking the sobbing windows,

mocking within the cold, mean kindling,

sputtering meagre, impotent, blue flecked flames,

drunkenly wavering, death-throw flickering

licking the shadows, but ever lying, failing, dying,

dolefully promising to light a new grey day.

Perhaps

Perhaps I’ve lived ten thousand lives

As boastful husbands and down-trod wives

Rich adventurer and frail old crone

No longer called by names once known

Captain of industry, pauper and fool

Adulteress drowned by the ducking stool

Each person I might one time have been

By present day eyes cannot be seen

Past deeds all gone like smoke in space

Of fortunes and debts there is no trace

And material things, all left behind

Cannot be claimed by this clean-slate mind

Each new existence, once the die is cast

Denying our knowledge of times long past

No enduring shadow of a former self

Can ere be found by any who delve

But isn’t some imprint left somewhere

In a cosmic library recorded out there

Perhaps by some power that plans our fate

Knowing existence isn’t a random state

If we kept the memories from earlier days

We might be able to improve our ways

Then born once more to make our mark

We needn’t start afresh, in the dark

But covetous claims on things once thine

Might clog the courts with writs malign

Perhaps it’s best to start afresh

As infants wearing virgin flesh