poeM oF thE daY

Jesus didn't do it.
William Shakespeare didn't do it.
(And neither did Edward de Vere.)
Mahatma Gandhi did it, but neither JFK, RFK, or MLK did.
And they say that Socrates did it, but that's just a guess.
James Dean didn't do it, Jimi Hendrix didn't do it, 
John Lennon didn't do it, Marvin Gaye didn't do it.
Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee, Charlie Parker, John   
     Coltrane, Anne Frank, Marilyn Monroe, George Gershwin,      
     Frederic Chopin, Franz Schubert, Rudolph Valentino, 
     Eva Peron, Tutankhamum, John Keats, Alexander the Great . . .
None of them did it.
Nor Sid Vicious, either, though that wasn't a surprise to anyone.
Vincent van Gogh, Mario Lanza, Amelia Earhart, Che Guevara,
     Christopher Marlowe, Glenn Miller, Raphael, Judy Garland, 
     Steve McQueen, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde,     
     George Orwell, Wolfgang Mozart, Lenny Bruce, Errol Flynn, 
     Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope,  
     nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope.
And Clarence Kalb didn't do it, either.
Not a single one of them lived to see 60.
Damn.

Oh, yeah . . . Yuri Gagarin didn't do it, either.

poeM oF thE daY

The truth is
that almost everything we did yesterday,
almost everything we'll do today,
and almost everything we'll do tomorrow
falls into one of two categories:
that which allows our bodies to continue to survive
and that which distracts us from the meaningless movement from  
     one empty moment to another.
Our lives are no richer than those of peasants in the middle ages
or cave dwellers in more ancient times.
We may be warmer and fatter and have longer lives,
but we do exactly as they did: 
maintain the body and distract the mind.

And maybe that's okay. 
But it also makes me wonder, 
is suicide the only thing we can do which actually has meaning?
Is that great refusal to continue with this sham existence
the only way to let one's spirit take control,
the only way to lay claim to dignity and 
if not create meaning
at least deny that meaninglessness controls you?

 has 

poeM oF thE daY

I was cleaning out the litter pan today
When I caught the odor of cheeseburgers.

Now, I'm okay with the idea that my cats's shit smells like cheeseburgers . . . 

. . . but if cheeseburgers smell like my cats's shit, that's going to be a problem. 

poeM oF thE daY

What I Didn't Do Today

or yesterday

or the day before yesterday

or the day before the day before yesterday

and only did a little bit on the day before that

but before that had done every day since September 2009

and many of the days before that as well.

and how do I feel?

my teeth feel like they're made of glass

the thin, cheap kind that will shatter against 

the faucet if you're not careful when washing dishes

and

there's a warm ball of barbed wire at the base of my neck

and another one nestled into the base of my spine

and

my muscles all feel attenuated

so to answer your question,
not so good

I keep feeling like I forgot to do something important
or like my best friend has just died
or like my doctor just told me I have three days to live
I have such a wealth of dread
and my lips are tingling, ears ringing, eyes blurry
and I really wish that I had had a cigarette today

But I didn't.