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July 26, 2003
Pleading With Today There goes another day. That downy pink cotton stuff going gray as pavement over there, yeah, that's it. That's my dying day. Over there behind those parched skeletons of pine lining the western ridge. And the air smells of nothing after yesterday's fire smoke distant and luscious now lost. And I'm jaded and yearning and bored with the battle. But at least I have this chair, this roof, this air. And the sky hovers all bland blue and pale of soul like everything down here in the far, far south and west of this place. This nation place. This patriotic place I wanna love but like a lover caught cheating it sickens me now. I love it now despite myself, despite everything I know and everything I don't know but feel like a rut in my gut and every ugly truth I wanna wish away. I love it, but I wanna run from it, pull up anchor and sail from it, abandon it like today abandons me, savage traitorous today going away, going native, tucking into another's bed, head buried in some foreign muff, Mother Russia moaning, China white thighs. Today, you are but a measly, mean-hearted, metaphor. You are the mote in my all-seeing eye and you die and you die and you die again and every morning you wow me with your wondrous rebirth, you dazzle me and in my bedazzlement I sleepwalk through centuries and seventy-seven dog years hence awake to find they've built a fence around my freedom. Stupefied I stare at your phony phoenix rising and daily demise and the years pass and pass and I'm dying I think. Yes, I'm dying goddamn you, Today! You're killing me soft and slow, you stupid fucking metaphor. You cow! You cowardly freak of nature. You narcissistic nincompoop! Leave off! Stop staring at your damn self in your matrix mirror image replay of day upon day! Enough! Stop wowing me to the grave and help me. Bring me coffee black and splash my face with morning dew, for we have so much so much, so very very much to do! Come on, Today! Come on, America! We have work to do and we do it well. I want the job! I want the work. Please let me in. Please let me help you! Today, you are the ONE! And America, you are the place. I wanna put a face on you the likes of which even the ancient trees will remember, if any of them survive. I wanna shout ecstatic for you. I wanna howl Ginsburg loud. I want the job. I want to live long enough to grace this good place, to write my gratitude in stone and stomp! God, how I wanna stomp! Come on, America. Open your mind to me and let me fly for you. I can fly. I really can. At least I think I can. Ahh, but there's the rub. You've never let me try, have you? You are too busy. You are too big.
There is a boat far out across the water. I can swim well enough. But the shore is choked with others, swimmers all. Your boat is small, America. And Today, you are fickle and brief as a batted eyelash. Today, you are cinders and cold hard facts. America, you are sinking, shrinking from me. And all around this big blue planet, hungry mouths multiply in exponential cries. I must get to the boat. I must. If nothing else, America, I will not bore you. And Today, I promise that I will make you proud. -RSM the Duke of Today Tomorrow
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