The Future
Ethan McGuire

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I

 

As a staunch, evangelical American,

Once I epitomized a top-rung Christian.

 

II

 

Now, you have asked me to discuss the future,

Yet we cannot discuss what has not been.

A wise man saw the future, called it murder,

The same as our own present, and our past.

 

My upward way descends beneath my feet.

My downward path, it rises up likewise.

God sees all time present for forever.

I am not God; the night still spreads outside.

 

I struggled, long, in worldview warfare, lost in time.

My weary back I never once unbent.

Then, one night, along the troubled road,

A stranger told me he could build a wall around me:

 

A wall between the culture and my comfort;

A wall between the foreign and my family.

 

III

 

I sold my crossroads soul to that old Stranger,

Though, true, he did not ask explicitly.

He only asked me for my loyalty.

In pledge, I volunteered my tired soul.

 

My upward way descends beneath my feet.

My downward path, it rises up likewise.

God sees all time present for forever.

I am not God; the night still spreads outside.

 

Once you sell your soul, lightning seals the deal,

And even when the pendulum oscillates,

Your soul is sold. You cannot buy it back.

I offer passersby my future, and my life.

 

As I lie in the mud of dirty roads,

Even the Stranger mourns my fate, in time.

 

IV

 

I lie here, trampled underfoot, O Stranger of Gold.

I gave myself to you, O my paper stranger.

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Ethan’s notes: ​​“My poem ‘The Future’ comes from a blank verse reflection of mine on Leonard Cohen’s 1992 song ‘The Future.’ While it is not what I originally envisioned as ‘Somethin’ Spooky,’ I hope
it is dark enough to qualify.”​

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Ethan McGuire is a writer, healthcare worker, and computer scientist whose essays, poems, short
stories, and translations have appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Dispatch, Emerald Coast Review,
New Verse News, VoegelinView, and other publications. He is an editor at Tar River Poetry,
Literary Matters, and New Verse Review and the author of Songs for Christmas, Apocalypse
Dance, and Ozark Son. Ethan lives with his wife and children in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

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