Almost.

I have files and files
and notebooks upon notebooks.
I also have scraps,
class notes
with less space in the margins
than in the paragraphs,
church bulletins,
and a host more of artistic shrapnel
from a mind that is ... dysfunctional.

However, my dysfunction is a special kind
because it looks so useful,
it looks like responsibility,
it looks like the right thing.
I hope I do not learn
to regret all the right things I do in my life
like I regret this.

When I have worn through my poetic dishonesty,
all of that 'shrapnel'
from all of my ideas and thoughts and wanderings
is not as much lately,
not as much as it used to be.
I guess that is success.
I think they call it focusing.
But I,

I feel like I am dying.

I did not think I heard voices
until they went silent
and there was only me
and my routine,
my checklist.

Today, all of my files,
each one of my folders,
and binders full of scraps
looks like a monument
to the ungrateful false god:
 'almost'.

It used to be
that when my imagination
had even the slightest drought,
I would throw up my hands,
throw in the towel
and wonder if I ever was an artist.
I am not so melodramatic now.

I have begun to define an artist,
myself and others,
by how they interact with the world,
how they see the walls and people around them.
Though, as of late
I have begun to wonder
if I have seen the world at all.
Or I am always just passing through?

I want to write something new
but I am old.
Old like the feeling that today
would be so much better
if I had never left my bed behind.
Old like the popping of joints
and the creaking of memories.
Old like the slowness
that makes the world wait for you

But not old enough for wisdom.
No, not old enough
for experience to mean something
more than weariness.
Not old enough yet for patience.

I would walk the world over
with worry
if it would make a difference.
But it does not
and so I do not,
most days anyway.

My almosts stay almost done,
and I begin to itch,
begin to burn
wondering if there will ever be more
or if this is it.
The loss of eyesight
at the end of a life
lived too fast.