Bad Poetry: Why Bother?

This poem was the last online writing I did on Friday. It came to mind when I saw the prompt at Poets & Storytellers United, for which the poem is too long. The prompt at Napowrimo.net suggested something much shorter, and is recommended to poets and storytellers with tired eyes. This one is for people who don't mind long intense thoughts.

Sometimes I wake up on a perfect blue-green-gold morning

and know some piece of dreck sprayed poison somewhere

because I feel the way drunks describe a hangover

and I didn't even eat after midday, but who's left to care,

and normally I bolt out of bed, if awake, before dawning

because morning's the most cool and peaceful part of the day

but those mornings I sit up and lie right back down again,

head swimming, nausea, cramps, pulse throbbing the prayer

that the sprayer feels sicker than I do, and longer, and without 

any hope of improvement in this world or in the next.

So, music. Caffeine. Water. The thing about cats

is, if they love you, and mine do, they'll wait six or eight hours

it takes to get back on my feet, feed them, and go back in.

They know that I'd rather be gardening. They sense that that's

a symptom, and wait at the door, exercising purr-powers.

On such mornings society does seem to be in a spin

straight down the abyss, with the proverbial handbasket

sold separately. Choices down to the style of the casket

(who'll be able to pay for a coffin?) our ashes lie in.

The next morning will likely be better, as how can it not.

Meanwhile: I've had to watch as too many lives end,

Seen some cringing and howling in terror, which is the lot

of the bitter clingers to glyphosate and (yes, complain;

in visibility, strength; in hiding, all's over)

all such blights on the face of the Earth. Seen some go

to their end in peace, likewise. You never can know

how people you've known in this world will finally go out.

A strong man huddles with face to the wall, moaning,

"Don't let her GET me!" (They had said his mother was rough.)

An innocent animal's final convulsion's enough

to sober a barroom of drunkards. A woman, that morning

recovering from a stroke, busy with garden and house,

sent me home at midday as usual; at three o'clock,

"I must lie down," and then, "Call the nurse-girl back,

and my children, if any of them can make time to come here,"

and I walked five hundred yards to her house

and as I came in she closed her eyes and died, no more fear

or pain left than shown at her high school graduation.

A month-old kitten, who had been lying beside

my knee, woke up suddenly, reached up to me, and died

in that instant, as if whatever awaited her in the Good Place

looked like the human she'd chosen as hers. Meditation

on the last moments of friends may be sad, but face

it, Priscilla: we die, with a little choice of how we go.

I would rather be one of those who stretch out hands to our Fate

as a child reaches up when you reach down to lift it up stairs:

thank you, Death, for that boost into the good things that await

the end of a life well spent! I intend to have cares

and business and plans left, however old I may be, then,

but if all ends today, I've had more life than most humans do

or ever have done. (I can be greedy. We all can, true.)

I know it is not in the particulars of religion

(though, being a Christian, I wish others were Christians too)

and not necessarily in bodies' final condition

so much as good faith in a Good Place beyond the end.

I don't know whether there's solid fact under the vision

into which some of us stride with a laugh and a song

and others collapse in a final convulsion of horror

at what awaits after life has been lived all wrong,

but, if visions are all that there is, let my last one be good.

Let those who see me dead or dying remark on the peace

and joy of my last dream, or the stern resolve of my last fight.

A gentle passage, or furious, into the night

matters less than that there be little cause left for sorrow

other than that people miss me, after final release.

So I bother. About you, I can't say. You must do you.

No petitions for money without merchandise to trade.

The cats must eat, however long I take to stand on my feet.

The time to review books and manuscripts must (how?) be made.

There's always one more book to write, one more poem, one song.

Sometimes lying still, listening to music, is very sweet;

sometimes moving, if only fingertips, keeping the beat

brings healing. Sooner or later we all get through

these low moods, until the day it's all over.

The sun still shines, and the stars do. The children come in,

now young men and women, and one day not even so young.

Joy, love, even the carnal passions, incline to recover

in time. So I bother. I'm greedy. Don't want it to end.