Daylight

I want someone to care. To cry and sniff and yearn

When I’m no longer there to fight and strive and learn

With them. Will I - when I - die anything but utterly alone?

Or does earth recall, with sky and nothing left but bone

To say that I exist? Or did, somewhere. And then, only

Memory. Bright, cold, lucid. Memory. And will the lonely

Ask that their remembering is enough to have made it count?

While I sleep, ask the living to wait, and count. And count.

.

Daylight runs away and the nights never last.

I wanted you to stay but didn't dare to ask

Or tell you what I want from you - or anyone

Who matters. At the front I made myself a stone

Sculpture of perfection, or what I thought could pass

Me on for your selection. And who in your own class

Could feed a growing ego. Yours or mine? Your eyes

See through stone below to where a heartbeat lies.

.

But what's the use of care? On days when air is heavy

And thick with dogs that stare with empty eyes of heady

Dreams of meat and bone on little minds that nothing

Know of art and snow and love? Dogs barking

Broker peaceful silence. Friends gathered speaking

Truth to utter nonsense. And every day - living

In light, and in no light - what now do I dare

To ask if you - or you - might be the universe to care?

.

When the sky is full of smoke and the ground is full of flame

Like nights that rocked and broke in dreams that left me tame

Before your eyes - what then? With a heart full of ideas

To govern humans, women, men, and a mind that only leers

Into a mirror I watch and wait. Wait for you and wait for me

And wait and bait and all too late the mirror speaks and so I see

Myself. The light of day. Living vision. Future, past. Regret

That cannot be avoided. Breathing, beating. Life’s futile duet.

.

I don't want to care. Why should I hold myself

Against the mindless dare of humanity's fiat wealth

When a wind could blow along the minds of any person

And say yes? Belong to me. Be a whispered curse on

Futility. Because we are - shadows in the daylight

Of a lonely wandering star that fizzle with a falling night

That lights only with a mirror. I will. I won't. I would

Know if today, and - or - tomorrow cared, or should.

.

The hollow ring of straw and bones against the bleeding drum of time

That beats and beats unending tones and fractured flows of broken rhyme

Is the putrefaction of tomorrow. Tomorrow tells that chaos deferred

Is chaos mastered. Yesterday's sorrow, lingering in memory is hope that conferred

On idiots, dominion. Care and light, living days and night, die

Slowly. Hearing, touch, sight - I smell or taste, savouring. Sigh

With a moment of bliss. A moment of shame. Touch my moan. See me shout

In the sun - a brief guttering yellowish flame, now wavering, blows out -