John Tustin

After Work Today and No Work Tomorrow

Watching the dust particles sparkle in the shaft of light
Coming in through the one crooked blind,
Looking for a clean glass and finding one
Along with a clean knife, a clean plate
With the music playing and the terrors of the day
Ceding to the horrors 
Of the night.
With hours to go,
I begin.

The songs become one another,
The dust settles,
I sit and I listen, I watch,
I wait.
Always, I wait
With my sense of justice
In a four way marriage
With my destitution, my loyalty
And my desire
To escape.
I sit here
Listening to music,
Writing poems,
Thinking about things.
Better than working,
Of that I am certain.

The dust falls like gray gutter snow,
Sparkling in that shaft of light
That does not quite reach me
Where I sit alone
Thinking about how everything
Is nothing.
Nothing
At all.
The camera pans along the circus,
Moving quickly past
The crying clown.
No one wants to see that.
I run my fingers along the glass
As one song becomes another
And then
Another.

I turn out 
The light.