The Cynical Side Of Me

While struggling through this life,
We have no one who accompany us,
We are born alone and die alone;
How sorrowful the path of humans.

We unlike other animals are conscious
With just enough intelligence to question why.
I look into the mirror and see middle age,
Creeping in to ravage my skin.

My past regrets sneak into my conscious thoughts,
And I cringe with that knowledge.
My body does not look itself,
It reminds me of what I used to be.

Hot eyes blink back rage and disappointment.
I may not live to be old,
yet I feel that I am already.
I think of loves lost and battles won.

I realize how small I am.
That people come into our lives,
Only to leave someday,
And that in time everything fades,
including me.
 

Reviews

[Steve Thompson]

I realize how small I am.
That people come into our lives,
Only to leave someday,
And that in time everything fades,
including me.

that last stanza really hit me hard. It makes me think of all the people, who come in and out of out lives, pretty heavy piece.

[Pax Analog]

This poem isn't cynical. This is one major aspect of the existential equation. The other major aspect, in a Mobius strip (one side that appears to be two), perennial wisdom sense, is what we humans (in a usually misleading objectivist manner) tend to call God, or Spirit. Typical religious belief is still dualistic, that is one supposes one is ONLY this dying despondent pipsqueak sorely in need of Almighty God's salvation. A nondualist would find that to be an incorrect perception. Rather, one's own radically simple stripped Awareness is a seed of an Infinite Mystery, and what one seeks or prays to without, is paradoxically looking through one's own eyes. One is not entirely, or even primarily, what one thinks oneself to be. A nondualist would find at root, that there is ONLY God, or Infinite Mystery, that the usual assumption of limited self is in fact too fleeting, too transient, to even concern oneself with. THAT self is dead so fast, it's basically absurd to even identify with it. This is the secret of all true mysticism (not counterfeit religiosity): there is an undying, Unborn transcendent essence that is the Source, and even the ultimate identity of all apparently separate mortal fleeting beings. A profound inversion of all the usual tendencies yields Awareness freed from the implications of form. Love and Consciousness are undying, Unborn. The destinies of karmic egoities are flimsy simulacra. Humor returns when this intuition fiercely outshines the inevitable rise and fall of ordinariness.

Seen in this Light, your poem is poignant good news, not cynical, not negative. Then our cherished particularities are held in an inherent embrace of Infinite Grace, which is all that ever actually IS, when all the sound and fury signifying nothing ceases.

[C.T. Bailey]

Imogene...our lives seem to be spinning past. I feel EXACTLY as you have described. How can a person be surrounded by people...and..well, I think you know how to finish that sentence. I am lonely in a crowd...and now middle age. I have to look up and take deep breaths. And even beyond the thoughts you have penned here, I ask "what contribution have I made?". To what will my life, two thirds over, account for? This write...philosophical. personal. intuitive. passionate. important. This write searches ME...for truth.
Todd

[Rainbowco]

Stunning work, you write as I only dream of. Do not be modest and deny the commit, it would insult the both of us.

[Pointblank]

I couldn't have said it better myself. Awesome. Hopefully your writing will stand the test of time.

[An owl on the moon]

Your words take me back to the words of a wise sage thousands of years ago: "Meaningless! Meaningless!
Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1). We view life through many colored lenses, and your cynical lense is quite perceptive and vivid in each word and phrase...

[An owl on the moon]

Your words take me back to the words of a wise sage thousands of years ago: "Meaningless! Meaningless!
Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1). We view life through many colored lenses, and your cynical lense is quite perceptive and vivid in each word and phrase...

[Symfony of Words]

beautiful, i can relate

[Hedra Helix]

its weird, I had a roomate who used to go on about how we are all born alone and we go through life alone and then die alone and I'd look at him as he was speaking and I never got it, but then like a month ago it hit me like bricks in a second of afternoon sunlight, that in a slice of reality he's absolutely right. we are.
And in this second I can't feel it, I dont feel alone, but I know the reality of it is here too, just as I saw it a few weeks ago, clear as day, and I identify it again here, in your words.


Have you ever heard the song balcony beach by latyrics? Its great.

I feel you.

[Arthur Henn]

Superb!

The last two stanzas of this poem hits home.

[James Takeo Panton]

seems everyone here has an opinion of this piece as well as its subject matter.....proof of which is my agreement to many points already made here.....insightful, well-worded, nice flow.....great work!