12/18/63

The taste of death is sometimes in my mouth, these solitary evenings.

Each day I live means one day less to live.

That’s evident!

Before I die, I’d spend some time with her,

Just living.

Mornings are frantic, like all mornings,

The too fresh mind incapable

Of the maniacal decisions that produce art.

Exhausted by afternoon, I have completed my chores,

And am faced with myself and my hot-self again.

Then I work. I work like a worm in the earth,

I work like a termite fashioning a tunnel, a bridge.

I work for a future I can no longer see.

That’s my life.

Will I in five years, two years, one,

Gnash my teeth again (teeth long ago gnashed to bits)

And curse what I hesitate to call my fate, my pattern?

Or should I call it my stupidity?

Who but an imbecile would have chosen such a hard way?

Or shall I in five years or one,

Grow like an oak dressed in evergreen.

Happiness having swollen in me, become me,

Because of the devotion which she swears?

This I argue with myself on paper.

That is what I feel like sometimes,

Paper.