On the last day of May
I will get up and do what I did
on the first day of May. Outside
things will be changed or not;
inside nothing has shifted.
I am almost the same person,
who is both the same person
I always was and somehow
I’m so different.

Inside requires a beat
before reacting, outside
there is no beat
or the beat has changed
but it still pushes me forward,
or backward — I can’t always tell
which way I am going.

On the first day
of June — tomorrow; on the last day
of June in thirty days will come
the first day of July and so on
until some day, maybe
a seventeenth day of October,
I will know I went as far as I could
against a beat slowly marching me
through memories as sluggish
as mud until I stopped
and then I say to hell with it;
to hell
with all of it. I’ll smile or cry or remain mute
in space and time and earth
and water. Outside and inside
will become pointless, will become
the same.

At the funeral parlor
I will have had my hair combed
and subsequently sighed.
Why?
Each friend will be looking
for the image to take home of me
and I will not care, not at all,
but it is something
I can give them. Something
outside or inside my self.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T