He arrived today
although none saw him coming.
He had been here before,
been quickly ignored,
despite his pleas and prayers,
they twisted his words
to suit their venal desires,
his message forever lost in translation.
They were not ready,
and in their hate fueled world,
they might never be.
The face in the mirror
was surprisingly older today,
and I can’t imagine that I
will ever look that old,
at least not for quite some time.
I wanted to ask him how
he had aged so badly, but knew
that it would be bad manners
to comment on his appearance,
so I smiled and he in returm.
I suppose one day I will look
much like he did this morning,
but I know that day is far off
in the future, and I just felt sad
for his older man’s face.
Today I am going
nowhere at all
and that is
the journey
I need to take.
Later I will go
nowhere,
a shorter journey,
ending up here.
It will be
a different here
than the one
I left, but
both here
are perfect
in their respective
nows.
I am waiting patiently for her to tell me what I need to do next today. I’m sure she’ll be along shortly with a list. Hopefully, today it will be a short list. And I know that no matter how quickly I get to whatever task it is she assigns, she will, watching me like a hawk, point out my shortcomings in its completion. And I am never done on time. Still, she is largely forgiving of my errors, she says, because that is just the way cats are taught.
When I saw you this morning
I knew instantly that I hadn’t seen you
in more than twenty years,
although it is quite possible we
have never met and today
was the first time my eyes
ever gazed at your face .
I suppose it is lucky that
you did not recognize me
although I don’t think I’ve changed
all that much in twenty years.
I was going to call out your name,
but decided against it in case
you have changed it or, possibly
because you wouldn’t answer
to the name I choose to give you.
It was good seeing you today,
let’s do again in a decade or so.
Today I should receive the letter
that I sent to myself twenty years ago,
telling me what I should be, where I
should be, who I should be, for the me
of twenty years ago was, by his own
admission, far smarter than I am, although
I am here and he is nowhere to be found.
If the letter does not come, I will sit down
and write to myself twenty years ago,
expressing my disappointment with him,
with his lackadaisical manner, ignoring
his epistolary obligations, content with
what, who and where he was without
though for where he was going, who
he would be, what he would do in life.
Ultimately, I will forgive him of course,
much as he did twenty years ago when,
on the day he expected to receive
a letter from me, the me who is
he twenty years hence, the letter
did not arrive for I have more
important things to do today than
to sit down and write to him, he would
not appreciate what I have to say,
so, it is time to get on with my life.
First Published in Cerasus Magazine (UK), Issue 3, 2021
Today they gave a party. Today, so far, no one came. Today, so far and until some come, we will breath easier. Tomorrow they may give another party. We hope that no one comes. The same for Tuesday and Wednesday, although that was supposed to be our party, but we can no longer come, because they may come and we cannot be at any party they are attending. Maybe they won’t come either, and there will be no party at all.
You imagine tomorrow will arrive
without warning or notice, and even
though you are skeptical, you accept
the possibility, and if it doesn’t arrive
what are the odds you will miss it?
If, as expected, it arrives, what the hell, it
was supposed to do that so nothing is odd
about it, and if not, well you never
really expected it to, it’s the blessing
of a shortening memory, so you win either way.
And so you go on with today, and when
not if, tomorrow comes you’ll be there
since you will recall your doubt
and you’ll assume it is nothing more
than the fall of the next domino
in the perpetual parade.
Between now and then,
between yesterday to and today,
between night and day,
between birth and death,
between good and evil,
between heaven and hell,
between light and dark,
between joy and sadness,
our lives occur
and we are so
seldom there
to see it happen,
lost in dreams
of what never will be,
never was.
Each morning I should take a moment
and seriously question whether I have
any history or should want any.
Each day I know in that moment that
I have the option of being reborn, of being
someone who never existed before,
and the price of this is shedding all
of my former selves, an erasure I fear
without reason, for reason says
that this moment demands my naked
presence bereft of the masks and
trapping I so easily choose to hide within.
This morning I did pause in front
of the mirror, and asked if it knew me,
and it laughed, said, “never seen you before.”
Tomorrow I will deny today and most
yesterdays, this I know is the right
course for what will be a ghost ship.
an old writer and his words 