Purpose?

Should our pace of steps
in our walk of life
quicken ?

Does my ancestry’s Aztec/Mayan calendar
call for me to witness keener,
to breathe in deeper,
the waft of life?

Will all that has been taught
in my life and academic years
of erudition and inculcated knowledge
expire into irrelevance?

Will the Human experience
become an unconnected microcosm,
a point in ‘time’ (Man’s mundane observation),
insignificant yet integral in the ‘chaos’ of the universe?

Will there be a 'purpose' in our being
or just another word in Man’s vocabulary?
Will the chronology of historical Human experience
dissipate into a timeless space,
into the void of light?

Will Man’s pursuit of Love, Hope
based on an omniscient, omnipotent, deity
all have been for naught?

If there'd be anything of this Human experience
that, at minimum, casts a shadow
upon the expanse and reality of the Universe
let it be the different dynamics
man has pressed into history;
the heart’s and mind’s smatterings
of music, the arts, kindness and Love.

Abuelito's Clock

Last night, home alone,
I stubbed my toe while in my dimly lighted room
lit by only night lights plugged into outlets,
a room ready for bed time.
I bend over to rub and soothe the pain,
tiny shadows cast, climbing over folds,
my wrinkled skin made surreal by this darken room.
Noticing toe nails left unkempt,
my Abuelito’s feet evince.
A reverie of recall when last I witnessed them
hooked around the legs of a wooden stool,
his toes splayed in Mexican huaraches
covered in clay dust and grey dirt
from the streets outside his shop
where he’d repair, resole 'sapatos' .
They're slipped like sleeves onto black cast iron anvils
that resemble upside down feet.
Sunlight dimly lights inside his shop at day time,
lit at night by shards of moonlight rays piercing
through strategically placed slats of tin and cardboard roof
Supported atop walls of grass and mud
not unlike many casas in Torreon.
Under the moon and 'piszca de estrellas'
with squinting eyes and bottle glass lenses
he would clean and repair 'pistolas'
to make a few extra pesos.

Like in Edgar Allen Poe’s ’Tell Tale Heart’,
"...a slither of light cast a shadow upon his eye",
a dim light lays upon my aged feet
reminding me of how ‘time’ passes by
like when shadows cast are captured only by chance.

Existing in Irony

The antithesis of the spirit of the day;
a day when devout Christians celebrate
the monist belief that all exists in the name of ‘Jesus’,
my dream last night carried me within
the nebulae of contemplation into suicide

Impassioned onus of understanding my agnosticism,
the doubt that I now carry within about the origination
and the 'truth' of the professed ‘scriptures’(all religions),
If this be not true, in that all our efforts to be ’good’
yields no reward of promised ’heavenly joy’,
then why persist in accepting the struggle and strife
of ’life’?

If all exists without purpose, an existential thought,
then why choose to exist in a world
where pain and suffering dominates?
Exist, where the hands of those who wish
to mitigate the suffering and assuage the pain
is for naught.

So many of us consider this option
during this time of the year
when social pressures are in their heighten epitome
and depression insidiously arises quietly
because we've not met other's and our expectations
of ‘successes’ in love, in wealth, in health,
and all without a religious vision of Hope.

But once again, then I think,
why base my belief system on religion
or institutions that dictate an abidance
to only those options they've offered
in their dogma or proscribed mandates ?

Here, then, I make a choice to believe in either
‘freewill’ or ‘determinism’.
I choose ‘freewill’, therefore,
I choose unselfishness, the sharing of ‘good’,
based on my moral convictions and as explicated
by Sam Harris, a contemporary philosopher, educator,
'one's moral convictions are not based in religiosity
or prescribed social norms; manifest hypocrisies'.

Volitionally, in this way,  I therefore choose to live.