A Thought Stated Simply, Drearily

© Lyric Doe

Nine lives
are not quite enough.

I’d determined this during
the interim
of lives two
and three
I think
(some kind of limbo perhaps?)
whilst swinging on a low hung swing,
rickety
decrepit
and in a manner that was all types of
broken —
myself truly,
reflected.
I drank in
the starry liquid sky
that formed a barrier
around me,
manna that eked out of pores
large and gaping —
as wounds should —
and it dawned on me
with each gasping breath…

Nine lives
are not quite enough.

It is not that one life
alone
isn’t an eternity
as is.
It is simply that
I feel
it is a futile
endeavor,
pretending
that a true cycle of growth
can have a beginning and
a proper end
in such a span of time
you know?
Perhaps,
it is my dreary nature
that dictates this so,
but alas
I feel strongly:

Nine lives
are not quite enough.

I have lived now
a few times I think.
In different places
and forms,
of course,
but I feel each one
echo inside strains
of mitochondrial DNA
that speak to
primal instincts
that rise and fall
inside my chest,
as tides are wont to do.
These past versions
of myself
come outside to play
every once
in a while
and remind
me I am
nothing new
under the sun
and yet
I build another addition
onto this house of cards,
a burden
to the next life-form
that will own
the cursed property.
It is a game really,
you see?
One
that never ends
I think.
Adding another
unsolvable piece
to an already
overly complicated puzzle.
And it isn’t as though
the riddles
are vastly different,
after all
we are doomed
to repeat the past,
as they say,
yet still
there is always
a little twist here
a little hurdle there
so that the answer
is never
quite the same.
Mind-boggling.
Frustrating.
Meaningless.
Life.
Every Life.
I need not repeat it
but would it really matter anyway?

Nine lives
are not quite enough.

Expert level,
is non-existent,
truly,
although conventional wisdom
would tell you
each life lived
builds on experience,
we start at square one
each and every time,
a perpetual n00b,
but that is conventional wisdom
for you.
Useless.
What is conventional
about this situation at all?

And it was at this point
I’d finished my surroundings
and found myself in a void
both cold and dark,
ready to hit the restart button.
Ready,
well…
may not be the proper word
but it was the position
I’d found myself in
anyway.
Of course, this part
would only be a vague memory
that may harass
my dreaming
reincarnated state,
possibly
the most frustrating part of all
indeed.
Not knowing,
Never knowing:
How many more times would this
cycle continue?
Until completion?
Could that even be reached?
Sighing fully,
I pressed the button
resigned
to a fate beyond
my control
holding back
the viscous ennui
wanting to drip out
of those prior mentioned pores.
It was in those few seconds
as the world shifted
from old to new,
I had a second thought.

How joyous
it must be to be a cat.

Originally published at Lyric Doe.