Philanthropic to I

There was never enough time
and the anxiety pushes down
regardless of knowing that it is certain
to never be finished.

All of it.
None of it.

How long would we all go on
notching our lives in rectangular weeks,
segments and inclines, corner piles
sidling past
hurdles and ho-humming
thru the week til TGIF
and the recursive sickness of it all
as in another episode, chronic
cases of the Mondays,
if we can only make it
to payday to pay the day
we said we would.

There was no question.
We did and do.
Our lives depended on such
boxing and enumeration.

I figure
if I live to the age of eighty,
I will have a little more than two-
thousand weeks left
total.

And I realize I haven't taken a vacation
in 208 weeks, or four years,
I have accrued comatose
creative inclinations, arthritic
anticipation, or being too busy,
and paid or not
the work wants us
to not take notice of the numbers
always changing around
by only ones
and zeros.

My heart flutters in the rhythm of time
to myself, also frequently attributed to
quality of life, a pursuit of joy, or
volunteer work for the self.

Well, we all know we could never afford
to quit
counting,
adding and subtracting,
projecting and losing
the balance that remains.





Drawing by Louis Leopold Boilly, 'Studies of Hands' Unknown date, located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art [CC0].

Deep breathing lessons

In a fit of (out)rage-

directed at self-

via repeat rejections

and the subsequent dejection

received-

I could only see (in the) red.

The message was loud and clear, I fear

they all might be right and

I almost entertained

a harebrained

nasty notion, deranged desperate thought

that I could spend my days in drudgery

earning regular poor money

working for someone else’s benefit(s)-

Then I remembered 

that doesn’t work-for me

though it would make some others

(beyond) happy-it'd be

at my expense,hence,  I’d be in debt, 

lacking value, 

inherently strangled spiritually.

And after a moment of light

reflection-

I can now breathe

asymptomatically.

Image of painting by Frederick Sandys, Love's shadow, 1867 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.