Words

 Words can lift the saddest person or destroy your sanity. 

They use them to name us on the day we are born. 

From the sweetest kindness to the cruelest profanity. 

Words.

We use them to eulogize our dead and save the living. 

A fabrication of our own making yet so unforgiving. 

Words. 

A picture tells a thousand words they say

But they can't say that with a photograph now can they

Words.

More powerful than any drug or weapon made by man

Every war or treaty was begun and ended with them

Nothing destroys love and creates hate quicker than they can

People tell you off or give you words of wisdom. 

Words. 

If only so frequently words of promise and hope didn't ring hollow. 

If only we could say loving words the world could follow. 

Words. 

Meaningless. Empty. Untrue and useless Maybe we could give them value and lie less

Words. 

Somewhere Today

Somewhere out there today

A father holds a mother as together they grieve

Hearing the words from the officer informing them

Words they hear but can't seem to believe

"There was an accident" he says "around 7 a.m."

Somewhere out there today 

A girl forces a smile working at a coffee shop

Knowing she will have to pick up extra shifts to make ends meet

To raise a child alone in a world that doesn't stop

Even though the baby's father died that morning crossing the street

Somewhere out there today 

Someone's life has been forever rearranged

They just looked away long enough to turn the radio dial

They didn't see how quickly the traffic light changed

Or the man step off the curb thinking about his baby's smile

Somewhere out there today

You're upset that you were late to work

Some chick screwed up your coffee order because she was tired

The road was closed because of some jerk

And where is the new guy, the one with the cute baby, the guy they just hired?

Somewhere out there today

You got a "today" when others never will again

So that you can take life for granted and whine about trivial things 

So you can complain about what a pain

It is when other people's tragedies inconvenience your life, the trauma that brings. 

Because somewhere out there today it could be your life that's over. So tell me how much it ruined your day that your coffee order got messed up. That your day was unrecoverable because of traffic. 

Go home. Hug your kids and loved ones. Just be grateful for a little while. 

Coincidence?

Is it possible the universe corrects mistakes in its own tapestry? If you screw up once are you doomed to misery eternally? 

Is there a chance that once a tread is misplaced the whole picture changes, or can it be re woven? 

I sit and wonder these things late at night. I reflect on past mistakes and wonder if I ever really had a conscious choice in the matter. Maybe that pattern was already set and my path determined before i had a choice. 

There's a harmony to the universe. An energy and fluidity. We can resist but are we really just doing that for show? 

I mean in Christianity, Catholicism in particular, they believe in predetermination. What if there's actually something to that, but not exactly as they believe it? And how can we really have free will if our entire lives are predetermined? 

Some nights I don't sleep at all. I'll sit up and write. Poems, short stories or just my thoughts. Do I really have a choice in that? Do any of us really have as much choice as we think we do? What drives you? Yes, you. Is it desire? Yours or the universe's?