Negotiation #5

What are you doing tomorrow?

What?

What are you doing tomorrow?

What am I doing tomorrow?

while today there are blackbirds

feeding young in the garden

and today the sourdough

is gently lifting in the kitchen -

its first proving

and today is the first day I have

time to sit down

since the last time

I sat down?

What are you doing tomorrow?

What am I doing tomorrow?

when tomorrow is probably filled

up already with moments

blocked with time and trouble and toil?

What are you doing tomorrow?

What am I doing tomorrow?

How easily you clatter the question around

Yes well

there is an Agenda

for tomorrow

I do have an Agenda

for tomorrow

but today

I have only

headings and subheadings

and outlines and landscapes

and plans and pre-frontal projections

and while a few papers have been

submitted for my early consideration

I cannot navigate

the complexities of tomorrow

until the vagaries of today

have been drawn into play

What are you doing tomorrow?

Ah, but if I were to tell you

something

for the sake of an easy answer

it would inevitably be

a short story

of possibles and maybes

a novella of nuance and supposition

a wish-list of the terrifying

and the fearsome

What are you doing tomorrow?

You come here with your crowbar question

levering yourself

into the slim and early tracings

of my promised tomorrow

I was just wondering…

you say

with your innocent

fingers fiddling

with thin porridge on the stovetop

and a sketch of an idea

somewhere across your brow

and I am wary of that sketch

because it is in that sketch that you

forge a steel cage that imprisons me

tomorrow

for it is that sketch

that fetters the ankles of my spirit

tomorrow

that channels the energy of my spirit

tomorrow

that breaks the resolve of my spirit

tomorrow

and casts me

into the pit of your desires

and the fuddle of my despair

What are you doing tomorrow?

If you insist on that question

then there is no tomorrow

do you not see?

there is no tomorrow

no tomorrow

I was just wondering whether you might be able to pick me up from the supermarket?