Thursday, November 21, 2019

day ONE THOUSAND and THIRTY SIX

We May All Be Dead Tomorrow: a poem for impending apocalypse

We may all be dead tomorrow,
but we aren’t dead today.

Today there is coffee that’s been made too sweet and costs us too much and is sold in a solid glass bottle we can fill with better things later.

Today there is a rich, thick, golden sun spilling across our floors.

Today there is a child who likes our company and asks for our time for no other reason.

Today there is a project in our hands that is coming along and full of beauty. Today that project was full of mistakes, all of which, it turned out, could be undone in the course of a morning, and for which it was no less beautiful.

Today we are full of our own mistakes that cannot be undone in the course of a lifetime, for which our lifetimes are of no less value.

Today there is a reach toward justice, with no promise of it ending up in our hands.

Today there is reaching anyway.

Today there is no rest from teaching.

Today there is a man who used us, who needn’t have, who practiced false, pretty shapes with his face in our mirrors and took the medicines we tend to share freely because lifetimes tend to be short. Today, he still doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong and he shows us so, just like he did yesterday, and probably just like tomorrow.

If we’re not all dead by tomorrow.

Until then, there’s anger, and time left to reflect on the ugliest shapes of our own truest faces, and time to say no,

and a cat staring lazily out our window,

and wool sweaters with hoods that swallow heads like dark tunnels,

and a chance to feel sorrow,

and hopefully, more of the same come tomorrow. 

-- Tomi Tsunoda









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