Can you feel my heart?
Do you want to?
Look into your own heart, and you will.
I'm just about the same as you.
In so many ways, despite all differences.
Each one of us is alike in our basic reality of life;
So alike in our thinking-feeling-dreaming minds, and in our miraculous magical senses.
Each one of us is also alike in being unrepeatable, irreplaceable, absolutely unique--
A paradox, but true.  Look into you, into your deep self, if it is me you seek.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I love ice cream.  Don't you? 
I think you do, too.
If you don't, you likely like some things that taste sweet;
And there are many other things you like to taste and eat.
Many things we all like to see and hear and smell and feel.
I love to feel on my skin the warm sunshine.
I love to feel the cool touch of rain.
I love to have a lover who loves me and is mine.
I enjoy pleasure; and I really hate pain.
I love life; and I fear death.
Now I treasure every breath,
Because I face something that is too terrible to be true--
But, somehow, it is still turning out to be true--vast and dark and in vain.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I was a poet before I was even age one,
And a fairly good poet by the time I was four.
Since then, during all my years,
I wrote of my love, joys, and sorrows--laughter and tears--
But I never wrote about losing the sun,
Or fearing the fall of night, before.
I was a foolish one,
Who never really knew the score.
I felt like I had always been here,
And I really thought I always would be.
I never really believed I could actually disappear,
And be gone forever, in blank eternity.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I love my Beatles and Beethoven and Mozart and Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.
All kinds of music I love.  What do you love, what music do you like to hear?
Some songs sing of happiness; some songs sing of pain.
Some songs sing of fastening faith, and some sing of the fleeing year.
Just like all the poets and poetry I love.  We hear the lessons, but rarely do we learn.
Jim Morrison sang the words "funeral pyre"; but did he feel the reality of that fated fear?
Did he really know he had to go, and that his body had to be BURIED some day,
Or be dumped into an oven of final creamtion-fire, and into ashes BURN?
I believe he knew.  Now I do, too.  But do you?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Look into your own heart, and perhaps you will find
The same turmoils that rage in me, searching blind.
Look into your own heart, and maybe you will feel
The same fear that stark reality now forces me to feel:
The fear that maybe, in the end, nothing exists and nothing is really real.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Like leaves falling from trees, so are the deciduous days.
They gather to the forest floor of the past, where the wind sweeps them away.
Nothing forever stays.
Life itself cannot stay.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But between mystery and mystery, we have life in the passing present.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We are so much alike that we are, at heart, almost the same.
If you want to feel my heart, then feel your own.
We are each a human being under the label of our given name.
The same light of life that shines in your eyes, in the world's first human eyes also shone.
Get in touch with your deep self, and you will find me.
Look around yourself, and see:
All the people who are so much like you, and so very like me.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Show others understanding, compassion, and caring.
For it is the same human light of life that we all are sharing.
We all look out on life from our souls, through our similar and unique human eyes.
We all feel pleasure and pain, glory and grief, hope and fear.
We all arise from some deep dark mystery, back into which we all too soon disappear.
No matter how high we may rise, each of us must fall.
If you care about anybody, including yourself, then you should care about all.
Without others, you would be all alone.
With others, you have brothers and sisters whose hearts reflect your own human heart,
Mirrors of your own soul.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
What do you think I'm trying to say?
Now that I know I am going away.
What do you think I want you to see?
What do you think I want you to do?
Do you think I want you to feel sorry for me?
No.  I want you to feel sorry for you.
I want you to really recognize that you also are mortal and are going to die.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We cannot certainly know our ancient origin the way we can know our individual birth.
But we are truly Godlike ones, in God's image of "I am";
And each of us is of wonderful worth.
In this world, we have limited knowledge and strength;
And our time of life is of fleet finite length.
We cannot know for sure whether there is life after death;
But we know there is life before death.
You, too, should treasure every breath.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I care about you.
I want you to rejoice in yourself, and really love your life, too.
I want you to look at rainbows and roses and really see.
I want you to feel every day's finite reality and infinite worth.
I want you to treasure every waking up as a real re-birth.
I want you truly and fully and deeply to understand
That the hour-glass is turned for you, too;
And that the time of your life, no matter how long or bright, is fast, finite, flowing sand.
The best gift to me that you can give,
Is for you to wake up fully and freshly and truly to life--and feel it, and love it, and live.

======================================

Written by Michael L P                        
aka MLP, aka Mr. Poet, aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC
(I'm just me)
Copyright © 2010 by M.L.P.  All rights reserved