Life is a strangely peculiar proposition.
It is filled with many things, people, and situations.
It consists of the stingy good times
as well as the ever persisitent bad times.
Good times don't come often for most
but when they do poke out their peculiar head
one can but only thank God he has been blest.
The blest one knows there is one thing to dread
following a good encounter, and that is bad.
As they say, "When you're on top there's only one place to go."
The true fact of the matter is very sad.
Most of the time the ratio of good to bad is like lead to snow.

Some people work all their life for one second of glory.
Life is funny like that--you reap what you sow.
Life looks at you with that sarcastic grin
and seems to say, "You're feling good now, but wait, it gets better."
Before you know it your life is in a whirl like you head after a knock in the chin.
If that weren't bad enough you find yourself helplessly battered.

The things which determine life vary greatly in weight and consistency.
We must take the sweet with the sour.

There are so many types of people in life's sea.
There are those who could take all your power,
money and earthly possessions for themselves only
and those who would steal for a meal.
There are the downtrodden mothers and forsaken children
and there are those who feel the necessity to kneel;
whose mission in life is to keep only from sin.
There are the well meaning blue collared workers.
They work for many long hours only to eat and sleep
and graciously feed those who have meant all the world through the years.
Of course there are those fortunate souls who find themselves knee deep
in money that they, the shrewd businessperson, eloquent lawyer,
successful doctor, or stately politician
has so vainly saved and scroogingly stored for his their own fur.
They do not understand the plight of the common man.
They vainly say, "Why does he choose to live so?
Why doesn't that lazy bum get a good job?"
But, does anyone like to live to-and-fro
in the very slums and ruins of a filthy mob?
Wouldn't he love adequately to feed his deprived family for once?
Or, take his poor children to a baseball game?
But, it is those people who are bathed in eloquence
who have always kept the poor common man in pain.
They won't hire him 'cuase he's just no good
or he doesn't present the proper appearance for the business.
Granted, there are also those who have said, "I could
use someone just like you in this business."
Those who have lent a tender helping hand
to the common man whom life has hauntingly left behind.

Of course, life is not always just and kind
and usually the common breaks don't command
the ever so increasing waves in a storm worn sea.
Situations always change and regrettfully alter.
When you start to get accustomed to what you see
somebody bumps the looking glass through which you peer.
Then you must learn a new landscape and climate.
Situation dictates as they fervently say.
One day life flows on a cool breeze and the horizon is golden bright;
the next day life chops along relentlessly as the devlish wind may.

They say everything happens with a higher purpose, a final reason
but sometimes life seems to have anything but purpose and intent.
Sometimes the common man feels like a lost particle floating on
in endless space like a solitary bit of dirt-ridden trash in an overly crowded event.

Have you ever found yourself lost in one of those awkward scenes?
Maybe you're in a strangers house or come across someone intimately involved.
You stand aside wishing somehow you were the person who can't be seen.
Time wishes itself to stand still and never dissolve
and you honestly swear the clock hasn't budged in over three hours.
But, those times do finally end and suspiciously they add character.
Life is ironically full of that one little insignificant thing that makes you cower
or that single individual who always causes your Irish temper to stir.
Why must I always be dropped between a rock and a hard spot?
Life is an interesting fellow whom we may never fully know,
yet, a better chess player was there ever a doubt?

*Written in late '97.
**There undoubtably are some flaws in this piece but I have chosen to leave it basically as I wrote it five years ago. In the words of Aldous Huxley (in referring to his work "Brave New World" years later):

It's defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to rewrite the book--and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it originally possessed.

This is by no means a masterpiece but I share Huxley's sentiment.