To Your Own Past

The date launches before daylight
With the nightmare of a car wreck,
And the cold sweat of a bad debt,
And sore flesh craving poetry.

This is the future the past made
As the sum of the past to date.
What did you have to do with this
Who tasks yourself with fixing it?

Life is where the lack of control
Collides with the need to decide,
Even for single cells, themselves
Whittled results of choice’s lines.

You will do something with the day.
You will decide, or you will try,
And what doesn’t kill you will add
To your own past, growing more vast.