A Routine

Each and everyday I fall into a routine

Of bathing myself in hot water

After I have drank plenty of water

Read in my spare time

And paint my nails black 

I turn off all technology in the meantime

And paint my lips 

A Mediterranean coral color

I read Cavafy, Nin, and Neruda, and Rumi

Farewell My Concubine 

Memoirs of A Geisha 

Stardust

And various things 

I read books on Divinici, and Mattise, 

And Caravaggio, and Lempicka ,and Kahlo,

Keith Haring was a stone cold bitch, 

And Jean Michele Baptiste was sweet

Pierre et Gilles in all their brilliance

Create masterpieces

I dress myself fine 

And other times casually

I even ponder sometimes

My fleeting mortality

Then I turn to photographs

Like the ones by Guy Bourdin

I'm sure I'm living because I am elated

That I live with this sinful guilty pleasure

I turn on the stereo

And play Puccini's La Boheme

I am emotional again

I'm sure I am living almost as they did then

Artists that never quite reach their glory

And fulfill their dreams is music to a poet And secretly are his screams

So I go and swim again 

And this time upstream

And I have fallen into a routine