Deja Vu ---------------------- Great men think alike To what extent my friend? How long do they walk together Before each takes a bend? The question, puzzling as it was Did not cause a stir Until a series of events Happened in a blur The first, amazing as it was Was mere happenchance A verse contest opened up In a beautiful town in France It called on everyone who cared To write up on the cue Poetry, with a small detail The very first line or two Had to be some given ones by the judges of the day And then you could compose the rest In your own special way The prize was good, a hundred people Wrote their verse and songs And then a young lad passing by Happened to come along He was given the first two lines From the greatest poet of all Started thus, what he then wrote Left them all apalled Every single line he wrote Was the original one They questioned him in every way And were truly stunned He had never ever read or heard Of the poet, nor his verse But initialized the same, he wrote The same exact words The wonderment of this is that That long composition Was of sentiment, and deep reflection Written with a vision They gave him yet another Under the same exact conditions The same original poet, but now for Very different reasons The happenchance did not repeat But it does make you wonder If the mind could be initialized to have thoughts brought up asunder I wonder at this strange event I wonder what this means Are we works of art? Of God? Of chance? Or are we just machines? The second event was in Kiev And I saw it from a bus As I traveled to my lodging, east It happened somewhat thus This wasn't as dramatic as The first one was, of course But it really caused some wonderment In the context of this prose A row of old and small new shops Were lined by the sidewalk A man, a bunch of roses in hand A woman by the next block "The roses are for her" she said The woman next to me But the next thing that she said Were astonishing, really "He's never seen her, you know" she said "But he will trip and fall" "And the woman will then help him up" "They'll then sit by the stall" In a second that is what transpired Before we were out of sight I was speechless, stunned, is this Deja Vu? Or clairvoyant surmise? Is it that time, though does move on Just doesn't go one way And that we live our lives again To see the very same day? I wonder at this strange event I wonder what this means Are we works of art? Of God? Of chance? Or are we just machines? The third and fourth events followed As if in a blur They happened at two different places Barely caused a stir I was on vacation then Having breakfast one sunny day Saw them mentioned in the news As fillers, by the way A little boy, just three years old Had a curious caprice Had learnt to read when he was two Was drawing maps with ease Every day that passed he would Recount in history Events spaced out one generation Exactly. A mystery They thought that he was reading up Volumes of books in stealth But he didn't have access to Any of those, nor wealth The second news, of a teenage girl Who would clearly recalll Some eighty different real lives As if she'd lived them all If memories are in circuits Then this cannot be at all Each time those circuits must be new Then how could she recall? Some people say that God must be Our thoughts in cosmic cloud Perhaps she tapped in those each time Somehow she was allowed I wonder at this strange event I wonder what this means Are we works of art? Of God? Of chance? Or are we just machines? The final and the fifth event Just happens all around Each day we want our own to thrive And we feel duty bound To help them up and forward at The cost of other lives We don't shed tears of sorrow when Someone else's loved one dies The "I" in us, some often say Is like a genetic theme That comes together oftentimes Through a lineage that's the same We procreate because, some say we're instinctively instructed To make provisions, genes and wealth For the next time we're constructed I wonder at these strange events I wonder what they mean Are we works of art? Of God? Of chance? Or are we just machines? ---------------------- 18 March 2018 9:19 PM