better

[thisnewday]

this is better:
to be awake
at five am,
inspired by
one last day,
one more filthy
floor to clean
on hands
and knees
because my back
is killing me,

one last morning
of incessant trains
sounding off 
before daylight
through distant streets
which are
no longer home,

inspired by being
the last inhabitant
of almost
empty rooms,
the way i think
my father had become,
within these walls,
within his head
within this life;

still, this is better,
knowing that,
when daylight comes,
although it
will not save me,
will not alleviate
the boredom,
the loneliness,
the self-interrogation
that crawling minutes
sometimes bring,

there is the artifice,
there is the emptiness
that sometimes rings
with its own poetry,
and somehow
that is better...

LPK
11.5.07