Our Own Reality

When what-if and then how what-if might be
As effect of a cause no one can know
Keep me awake I try to keep in mind
The future we dread ahead as we go
Becomes the past when we leave it behind

But if you need ask you need not ask me
We each must find our own reality

The past goes fast the future comes too slow
So no one notices the present now
Slip out through a crack in the back nor how
The longer we live the clearer we see
That we are trapped within a tragedy
Heroes and villains as fate will allow
Protagonists of this dying dumbshow
As agonists often in agony

When what-if and how what-if might be then
Beyond the cause and its effect between
When all has come and been and all has gone
Dreams dreamed life lived love lost and found again
When eyes must close to bear what they have seen
Night shades itself in shadow from the dawn
Our time will come though I cannot say when
We come to go and so our life goes on

One thing alone is known and satisfies
All existential questions with a thump
I am not very good at prophecy
But I can tell you everybody dies
So rather than sit on the fence I jump

You want as much as I do to be free
We each must find our own reality

+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMVIII

Fascinating, I think we each find our own truths and our own realities. Through finding these things we begin to find ourselves. Odd isnt it, how heavily we study reality and seek to bring explanation to it - yet spend so little time trying to learn about ourselves.

Day is night to those that sleep by day and hunt by night. Black becomes white to things which see at night, but cannot see by day with eyes unclouded for to them, our day is their night.

Only in looking at ourselves can we gain insight into others. We are all alike at a deeper level, in understanding ourselves we understand each other and through understanding - can bring peace.

Your poem seeks a fundamental truth about people, we all have our own realities, but in ways they are similar. We all feel pain and sorrow, happiness and joy. Poetry is not words but emotions, it moves people not by what is said - but by the thoughts and feelings which emerge from those words, while different and special to each individual, we all feel in harmony.