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.

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