On the morning of the end of the world I stayed up too late and caught cold.
This is par for the course.
Nevertheless, I was up with the lark, making tea.
Usually I have coffee, but there, I have to think of my cold.
I sit on the porch watching the final night wash out like a wave on the beach,
Pulling out one last time, dragging so much detritus of the past
Away, leaving so much wrack and foam behind, it's on my mind,
Daylight crashing over it all one more time, indistinguishable for a few moments.
I'm wondering how the oceans will stop; I'm moving away from metaphor here;
Will it hit like a car on a mountainside? So much motion, I just don't see
How it just stops like that, can't picture it at all; none of it matters
If some things are bigger than life, bigger than tides.
And then there's love. My nose is running, there's goop in my sinuses,
Thick green goop, my hands sting in the cold, no coffee -
And then there's love. How can I think of it? Easier to picture the curtain
Of friendship that cloaks off every brightness, bites back at evil,
Time, I mean, hunts us and stalks and waits and shoots and misses
And shoots again and chases and trees a soul, tires a soul out good and proper
With no quarter or respite, but maybe you sometimes find a shelter;
I'm talking about understanding and comfort; I'm talking about a drawn curtain.
When I was a kid in school, sometimes they would take the doors down,
The ones to the bathroom stalls, so that you would have to defecate in open view,
As a means of punishment, humiliation. Eventually, they'd reattach those doors.
You could really breathe a sigh of relief then; those doors were friends
When no other could be found - but love, love is too much for a day like this.
It is the last morning of the world and I'm
Thinking of taking an embarrassing shit when I was eight.
Is this what's wrong with the world, or what's wrong with me?
Nevertheless, I can't dwell on it. As Booker T. once wrote,
Time is tight. The sun is higher. I can feel things slow down.
Should I have travelled? This is a big question. Is it better
To bear witness, one last time, from a mountaintop,
by a lakeside, the seashore? Better than this, the front porch
Of a house I rent for $600 a month, in a residential neighborhood
in Northern Virginia? I'm watching people jog, in the cold, walk
Their dogs (so innocent - like they're dreaming me up on
This porch), going to work. Sometimes it is better to just go about your routine
If you truly love your life, do what makes you happy.
