Wake up at two, go back to bed, wake up at four,
Beat off to German grandma taking it in the a,
the highlight of my day.
Who gives a f...,
I'm sorry to say,
It's exercise of a sort,
good for prostate,
eyesight, Mother Nature says,
good for health, for longevity.

Such are costs of jobs, the late nights and the wine.
The last customers leave, the staff is gone,
I'll walk home in silence and do the laundry,
shirts, for work,
up 'til it's light out.
What shall I do,
now that I've had my tea and breakfast?
Chicken curry heated in a microwave,
hits the spot.

Hurricane season.
Get it out of your system
and relax a bit.
Clean tee-shirts over a chair, as not to wrinkle.
Too lazy to fold right now,
or for the commitment of putting away
folded things
into a drawer.

There's nothing I want to do tonight
no one I want to see.
I'll lay off the wine, not provoked by anyone.
I'll get in a bike ride somehow,
maybe go down to the Lincoln Memorial
and read some words etched in granite,
The Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural.
The pinnacle of a man's achievement,
words.
Simple
plain old
words.

It's true: 'The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here.'
They should have made him a saint for that.
He got reality and suffering and the meaning
behind daily life and existence itself.

Rest proud in your stately chair, Mr. Lincoln,
Presidential, gently grave and dignified,
lit from above and behind,
on your pedestal,
alone as we all are.
You worked hard enough in life.
You read books.
You wrote your secret poetry.
You were in life
a man of flesh and blood,
like me.
You deserve the veneration, no matter
what lesser men might see.
For what you did.
No worthless lines there.

It's asked of us in life that we do something,
as a service for the rest, to continue on
with 'the unfinished work.'
The terrible struggle of the every day,
just so, dishes, boredom, listless lonesomeness,
the lack of sense of being any use at all to anyone,
the bayonets of memory, the guns of feeling off,
the enemy hill of pasts to march against,
never to climb to well-defended tops,
a soldier's stew of choices made
unawares, building one by one,
like the grocery list.

But sweet to remember, or think, in its midst,
that on certain better days you were once
an instrument in the hands of God
bringing forth peace and justice,
even though it cost. Dim memories though they be.
'The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here
have consecrated it for above our poor power to add or detract,'
one can say of places he has been.

Lincoln, man enough to not give a damn
about anything
but doing
that which is, was, right,
and, be decent at the same time.
He never seems to have raised his voice,
it seems,
at those who gave him shit.

Avoid the news, and all the clap-trap talk,
The Titanic on TV,
and get down to say,
what's on your honest mind.



One can see why epic poetry is written.