Inspired by As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden

As I walked out one evening under the blanket of dark blue sky
Thinking about the week to come
Will the days be remembered, or rather wasted and forgotten?
Each tired child thinks the same thought.

Sunday nights slip into Monday mornings
Mondays slowly become Tuesdays;
Yet somehow the days become one
Each tired child unable to differentiate each day from the last

Wake up, brush teeth, brush hair, repeat.
Math, English, read, write, factor, and repeat.
Return home, work, eat, sleep and then repeat.
Each tired child thinks, “Is this really living?”

Stuck in a labyrinth of concrete
Routine forces every move
Taunted by the warm blanket left behind, only to leave a blanket of papers
Each tired child stares at the ticking clock.

Thoughts interrupted by bells at the same time
Routine consumes every thought
Each indistinguishable day
Where each child struggles to lift heavy eyelids.  

Same faces seen every day
Same places seen every day
Weeks blur into months, which in turn disappear in the minds
Each tired child fights every robotic move.

Closing doors and opening books
The teachers scream and roll their eyes
Where thoughts aren’t thoughts unless they are in Times New Roman
Each tired child strives to be heard.

As I walked out one evening under the blanket of dark blue sky
Thinking about the years to come
Routine is inescapable while spontaneity is a distant myth dreamt up in the minds
Of each tired adult who forgets what it’s like to be a child.

When I spiral, it’s no waltz

I don’t fall like autumn’s leaves,
I lack their certain grace;
No -
I plummet like the driving rain
Blowing through cigarette smoke late at night

Is that what you wanted me to tell you? Not quite?

Stop searching for my poetry, it makes my skin crawl.
I’m not your great mystery, your tiny dancer
Your savior or your sin

For the love of god,
don’t stand in the waters at the bottom of this cliff
waiting to catch my fall

Go back and wander through the graveyard of my lovers
And memories of New Jersey,
If you don’t believe me

Let me walk out into the evening, like Auden may have done
I’ll be there to watch when the lovers have left
And the deep river still runs on

That terran voice
Has little weight,
Is slow and late;
But voice sooner
Trade all feature,
It had  a teacher
And is other.

That like a forest
Keeps all time,
If nighttime isn't
The death of that;
For time is miles
But the people's struggles,
Where goblin has lurked
Eager and deadly.

If that is never
A goblin's measure
Nor, began that;
Is goblin at rest
But when it drift
Thought shall not near
The oldness there,
And oddness steal
Her ceaseless shake.