Future Is As Future Does

( for Deb B)

First thing I do every morning
is cover my head in the bed
so Miesha doesn’t come up
and lick my hair,
bathe me awake.

Next things: I piss, wash,
weigh my body, go back to my room
and measure my blood against norms
while Miesha screams bloody murder
for her treats.

After that cat is fed I go, pick up
this computer — and of course, I write.
Sometimes it’s good,
sometimes it’s shit, but either way
it gets done.

Then I sit still for a long,
long time. This is the way
my day begins: every day
the same with the exception
of the marvelous I try to create

on screen, on a paper, in the head
of a reader; in his chest, her chest,
anywhere between the shoulders
and the mountains or the sea
or the moons I can’t see but can feel.

Future is as future does —
can’t you see me now, unshaven, dressed
in ratty pants and rigor, sweating
the details on a mess of words? I’ll
be at this tomorrow unless I die

before then. A woman I know
will puzzle over some of them
before she goes to work the next day.
She will find them suddenly in their intended
ports, right between the chakras.

Future is as future does and that’s all
I can ask of it — that in the future
this poem, like a dart, will meet its mark.
I’ll likely be gone by then, somewhere
down a well-lit road. She will remain

with this ember, this needy glowing spark
of me and my escape from a cage
which she will likely think of now and then
in a different way entirely. Maybe with a cat
in her lap; purring and yawning, bored and content.

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