Finite

Witnessed my mentor, and certain family members pass away.

Experienced feeling a friend flee, curtail the call, turn astray,

Plague took hold, spread waste; he barely kept it at bay.

Another relative lived by the gun, to work up to dying by it:

Riddled end-to-end, fountain job, rolled up in a carpet,

They bunned his existence, smoked up like a cigarette.

It’s all relative; where we stack our chips, the sum of made bet,

Some ancestors succumbed, rock bottom, their wills became bottled,

The rest laid to rest by stress, old age, a character coddled.

How could I not value life’s demands,

Let down those that believed in, imagined tremendous

Potential in a man that could at one point fit in one hand?

Buoyed by their beliefs my nature stayed conscious,

Hard won blood, continued to odd daughters, even a setting son.

I couldn’t bear lowering their memories nautical miles, thousands of feet

Into fathomless trenches, deepest ocean depths where light is shunned.

My spirit – a ship sailing strong stormy strident seas,

Caught in a hustle, navigating strife, I followed technique:

“I was left to die by the doctors in the Children’s Hospital,

But I never lose hope, success is psychological.”

Understanding this concept, I was able to get over it,

Climb mountains by standing on the shoulders of giants.

The philosophers, scientists, and generals that painted literature,

Intertwined with the past generations that carried me to this place:

A time, an opportunity, you see – me to we. Intimately finite,

With the possibility of becoming, travelling past, infinite height.