But Not Today

I may smile politely
and nod my head with heartfelt greetings
and obsequious platitudes
to help grease the rusty wheels of
social intercourse….
But not today.

I may grovel and serve
and grant the right of way
time and again
to you and your uptown kind…
But not today.

I may shuffle along the cityscape
an invisible member of the anonymous pack
content only to go unnoticed
in a sea of harried humanity…
But not today.

Today is for me and mine,
not for you and yours,
a day for glorious self-absorption
and cosmic autofixated revelries,
in which I am
the Supreme Unmoved-Mover
in my own self-contained universe.
Today is my day
and mine alone,
and you, dear friend,
are the uninvited interloper
in the myopic monologues
and solipsistic soliloquies
running through the endless channels
of my own egocentric mindspace.

Tomorrow there will be time again
for duties and obligations,
for oughts and musts and have-tos,
for all the silly stupid demands
the others so capriciously
seek to impose.
Tomorrow I will play
the serf yet again
and graciously do
my masters’ biddings
with winsome charm
and gentle subservience….

But not today.

[inspiration: I was in the city on Monday buying a coffee at Starbucks (don't ask me what I was doing there....I actually hate the evil place) and heard one worker say to another, "I may do that for you, but not today." Her comment got my creative juices flowing, and the result was this little poem which I finished in the Reading Room of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. The point: anything in everyday life, no matter how inane it may seem at first sight, can become a source of creative inspiration if you will just allow it to.]