Bloodstone

Tomorrow I am turning,
And I can count the days
For days are only moments to me now,
And Time is only memories.

Tomorrow I am turning

And what is that. - what is that turn to me? that turn in me.

The turn of a wheel on a car.
The turn of a screw in a hard plank of wood
The turn of a flag in the wind.
A day. A second. An hours worth of memory.

Turning twenty one.

And I may drink - but what of that?
And what that I am one-fifth withered, one fifth gone,
       one fifth turned to dust. As if it should have mattered
How it all was for me; to whisper, as if it should have
       mattered
How thick the wood was,
Or that the wind was blowing at a certain speed,
Or the name of the street, that I should wish it taller, or wider,
       or longer.

I have been drinking all these twenty one years.
Drinking all.

In a room nearby, someone is graduating. Someone is proposing, and
someone beside him is ordering something to eat. Someone is going,
someone is stopping and smelling the flowers. Someone is beginning,
and someone else is starting again. Someone is laughing with tears, that the sun
should rise, while someone mourns, and wonders that there is a sun at all.

In a room nearby, they're singing happy birthday.

And I am turning, and drinking all.

Like a dog who turns from the bowl of water
        because someone has dropped his cake. I am turning
        in the drops of water from his beard,
Evaporating, forming, falling to feed the corn,
        to be gathered, and poured on someone's head,
Laughing with tears.

I am turning twenty one, the twenty first turn of
    a rubix cube, in the hands of something I cannot
        understand.

And you whisper, is if it should have mattered
        that I am one fifths useful, one fifths solved and complete,
one fifths belonging.

I am turning the twenty first sunrise.

I am turning the twenty first stroke of the pen in
        the poem, on the table, in the room, in the house,
        in the world, in the universe, in the mind of God,

Where they are singing happy birthday every day of the year.