Musts, Shoulds and Could’vebeens

The solemn years have ended
In bliss of holidays extended
And parting with the world
Still unfair, with but a hope to dream

With tolling bell and taxes taken
It’s time for death, and nothing less
The centuries have not smiled like this
Since 1956, or else

Good news can be the common way
Our bones and teeth still have decayed
Time was not differ than what it is
You say that’s just life, I must have heard wrong

How heaven could be so sad?
And life so bottomless a well
Of mystery and anonymously clad
What’s on its way is going and gone

Time for eternity, never enough….
There are no “complete poems”
Only preferments and stations
That must dissolve, this purple state

Into a balance of modest clay and ash
The unblushing end is upon us here
So stay a while majesty and regret
That we might have loved, a little bit more

The sad world in her corrupt gown
With all the same stories and fallen angels like
The soldier, peasant, monk and squirrel:
We are just weary creatures here
Awareness of the end, is the beginning of the end.

Minorities

Why do we berate minorities?
It could be us, have you ever
Lived in poverty, gone hungry?
Tried to be autistic for a day?

Survived schizophrenia
Been disabled, grown old?
Have you ever broke your hip
And tried to rehabilitate?

Gone to jail and tried to
Reintegrate into society?
Have you ever been black
Or Hispanic in a society

That has predetermined your fate?
Have you gone to college
Only to find yourself
Unemployed and in debt

With student loans and credit cards
That you may never pay off?
It could have been you
Who got cancer while still young

Or suffered from depression
Until your wife left you
Or been that single mother
On welfare and without a friend

Or that immigrant who
Had to work a dead-end job
Just for a chance for their children?
Maybe it was you, who knows.