Meditating on the mother of questions,
(I don't mean the coronavirus
Or the First Class Esoteric Lessons)
But the one that necessarily concerns us:

Sooner or later you'll want to know
If life has meaning and if so: what?
We can start be presuming the answer is: no!
If that's the case are we alive or: not?

Or are we actors in a computer game
As the movie Matrix wonkly warned?
Like death itself it's all the same:
No one emerges wholly unharmed.

But if life – human life I mean –
Is real, then so are you and I
Not to mention nature's green
Life of leaves that will also die.

Don't bother going to church
To confess your tawdry trespasses;
It'll surely leave you in the lurch
Cause God doesn't give freepasses.

The killing going on with so much terror
Could make you resort to Brother Booze
But that would be a fateful error
Intones the Reincarnation Blues.

We'll meet again some day somewhere
The songsters sing, the lovers cry,
As though they knew or even cared,
Forgetting that we all must die,

Some day, somehow, somewhere, some place.
Little do they know it's true
That we all must meet somewhere in space
Although in bodies ever new.

To believe in God is a pretty good start.
To reject him though is also done
By putting the donkey before the cart:
It's not His fault the bad guys won.

You wonder why she died so young
So good, so beautiful, so loved by you,
A love alas not lasting long,
Laced with pain biting through.

I Know, I know, it doesn't seem fair
Perhaps it isn't, but who are we
To Judge? Who are we to care?
Time is long or short, you see.

It's time to stop and dry your tears,
There's nothing more to win or lose,
At least not now as the ending nears:
So rules the Reincarnation Blues.

You want to live to a ripe old age,
But rather not by growing old.
Can't be done so tether your rage,
Relax, be smart, come in from the cold.

Join the toothless-talking droll,
Balding braggarts who roll the dice
And hesitate to sell their soul
(To you-know-whom) at any price.

Something I almost forgot (on purpose):
Not made and sold by Big Pharma,
Likely as lively as a three-ring circus:
Yours and yours alone: it's karma!

Nothing is forgotten, my friend,
Nothing forgiven without repentance;
No matter how hard you try to bend it
There's no confounding karma's ascension.

Reincarnation Blues has a drumbeat ,
A rhythm that keeps your blood awake.
To challenge it results in a drab defeat,
A sudden sodden chilly checkmate.

Whether you're black or white or in-between,
Your attack is obvious or by a queenly gambit,
It depends on how by the gods you're seen
To have loved – truly or merely faking it.