November Tenth, Two Thousand and Six, Anno Domini

To be a man
is to shut your mouth
and suffer. You will open it
to kiss with a snaking tongue,
to provoke, to deny,
to curse yourself
under your own breath. But
a man does not complain,
even as time drains his life
like a leak
in an abandoned swimming pool.

The torture of life
is that time crawls
when you're disconsolate
or indifferent. It'll seem
like days, the time it takes
to shower, sputter to work,
struggle at an empty desk,
mindlessly tango with your feet
to a B-side in your ears,
wait on a line to cash a check
that measures you, eat breakfast
for supper alone in a booth
for two, fight to keep your eyes
open enough to spy
a digitized smile
or flash of skin.
Some will have snuck a cigarette
in the idle moments, others
will have used that time to pray.
But it will only have been one day,
and at the end of it,
Jack Palance will still have died.