Upon Making a Major Decision
(A Personal Shell Game)
Thursday.
Stars are enveloped by blue
The Day leaps boldly
Over yesterday's dark horizon.
Old me wakes,
forgets happy dreams,
later phones, and
New me hangs up ... "employed."
CELEBRATE!
friends fade into excuses.
"Celebrate? No, I'm going to bed early."
"Celebrate? Sorry, I'm going to another party."
Celebration clouds into confusion; doubts urgereconsideration.Where's the party -- do people study on Thursdays?
Why indifference instead of joy?
Who will visit me in Houston?
What have I done today?
Still unchanged,
Me, my feelings, temporal world all
Undivorceable. New me equals old me.
Mirror, the imperfect source of fact, reflects
All pain ideally; I look the same.
Still alone, surrounded
And isolated
In uncaring mobs.
Growing Houston,
"1000 strangers enter weekly,"
Calls the new me, different, but
Still old problems in new scenery.
People-decades from the few Ilove (never-fading),Who will I go out with?
Who here can I go out with?
Stars reenter.
Running nowhere, I sit back.
The future awaits: a black box with
quasi-magical promises.
Back to bed, perhaps changed in perception(but not in presence),Finally asleep to reach another day,
Dreams of crying, permanent, hold tonight's mood.
I will stop praying long enough to wonder:
How much longer I may have these friends
And then to sit in a lonely
Houston apartment, missing those times the ones I
Loved were too preoccupied to
Celebrate happiness and life with me.