-R.E.M.
Time has gotten away from me. So I wrote this poem:
Apocalypse Now
It’s the night of the Rapture and, of course, I can’t sleep.
My head is weary but my heart is full of regret.
There is nothing like Armageddon to really put things into perspective.
My pillow only can register that each moment is now more precious than the last,
the doomsday clock slowly ticking down until
the inner monologues racing around my soul will finally screech to a halt.
Finally.
Forever.
How will it happen, tomorrow or never?
Will the world mouth a last gasp from tremoring cracks in its cement crust,
people cursing the time into which they were born,
material possessions grossly dissolving in front of tear-reddened eyes?
Or will there be a quiet sense of calm,
an assured, collective knowledge that there is something much greater than politics and cubicles, reality television and oil prices,
sighs of relief wafting to the heavens on the wings of millions of prayers?
Well, shit, I don’t know.
I’m not a theologian or a philosopher or even someone with a firm head on their shoulders.
I’m just
an almost poet with an eighteen dollar notebook and a dull pencil,
an almost poet with an eighteen dollar notebook and a dull pencil,
a mediocre Catholic, Bible buried in the bottom of a cardboard box.
a barely sophomore who has no idea what to do for the next sixty years
(barring any Second Coming of the Christ, of course.)
And all that I do know is,
if I somehow survive this small-pocketed weekend of Evangelical hysteria,
I’ll have a new motto:
Live every day like it’s the end of the world.
And I won’t worry about grades or girls or good-paying jobs,
because we don’t know the time or the hour and,
for all I know,
it’s coming up real soon.
So, bring it on.
