A Significance of Dishes

The dishes sit in the dishwasher, clean and waiting.
Others stew clumsily in the sink, stinky and impatient.
I notice and I pretend it's not happening.
But I know they wait for me and me alone.

Today I must unload the clean ones, without the anger.
For they no longer represent a promise you failed to keep.
They are just dishes, clean and waiting.
And the job is now mine alone.

And that, that is because you never truly made me that other promise.
The big one.
The one I labored to be worthy of.
Never realizing the futility of my efforts.
Like fretting about dishes...and windows...and floors.

This morning I will unload the clean ones, without the anger this time.
My sadness will wash over me like rinse water
As I seek to bring order and safety to my world.
As I look forward to the domestic comfort of the machine's swish swish.
As I leave the chore behind,
And go on with my life

Hope

Is this how we give up on our hopes?
No really realizing it, but bidding them farewell
Without acknowledgment
Except in those painful moments of
Forced awareness
Which are so quickly buried in the business of
Being too busy to make what we so desire materialize
In the real world
Pulling it out of the realm
Of dreams and
Hopes

Counterpoint

Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that - to borrow a phrase from music - is contrapuntal.

--Edward Said, from Reflections on Exile

Hope

And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

--Barack Obama, Election Night speech

Phantasmagoria in Two

If I gave up all of my pride for you
And only loved you for now
Would you hide my fears and never say
Tomorrow I must go

--Tim Buckley, 'Phantasmagoria in Two'

Being

I rage and I rail,
People, they make me crazy.
People close to me and people I will never see again.

And yet, in my moments of awareness,
I am inclined to realize how each should be granted the same
Understanding and patience
I would ask of the world for myself.

The frustration becomes mixed with fondness.
And acceptance.
That's just how people are.

And I wouldn't have them any other way.

Kindness

...but now I am grateful for the experience, however painful it was then. I learned what it feels like when people are unkind. I learned that I never want to feel that again, and I sure don't want to make someone else feel like that.

-- Laura Love, 'The Laura Love Collection' liner notes

Saeta

Saeta.
The very term, with its double meaning, has a thrill to it.
The thrill of flight.
Its words you translated from your language to mine.
I could hear the music,
See your Christ in the lines,
Feel the passion,
The devotion and the agony.

The Christ of your language is alive - even in death
Warm.
"Ours" feels cold, cerebral, rigid.
No true passion,
Only cold sweat.

Individuality

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears.

--Henry Thoreau

Solitude

It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world, to plunge into the cool bath of solitude.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'Footprints on the Seashore'

The Atlantic

I stopped just short of the water line,
Savoring the anticipation.
Wading in slowly, reveling in the thought of a new body of water.

Waves to my calves, I stood and gazed in the direct I called home.
It was disorienting, facing the wrong way.

When I finally emerged,
I didn't want to rinse my feet.

I am not greedy

I am not greedy; I do not seek to possess the major portion of your days.

I am content if,
On those rare occasions
When truth can be
Stated only by poetry,
You will, perhaps,
recall an image -
even only the aura
of my films.

And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rate, assume sometimes, the forms of my images.

--Maya Deren

Blossoms

The thing I love about cherry blossoms
Is that one day they seem suddenly just there
Overflowing with abundance and beauty

They remind me that life
Occurs in an instant

Plata quemada

- ¿Te importaba?
- No, era un lugar donde esconderse, nada más.

- Did you care about her?
- No, she was a just place to hide, that's all.

--Plata quemada (Burnt Money)

Lies

If it were not for language, could we lie?

--Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire

The Return

And as so often happens, we soon came to a fork in the road.
You let me venture a ways down one,
On my own, as it turns out.
As I clumsily sought solid ground, you strode off along the other,
A well-paved path leading back around to familiar territory.

I still cannot be sure how far I had advanced
Before I realized I was alone in my explorations.
The puzzle I now faced being how to find my own safe route.
To circle back and return to where I'd been
Before our trajectories coincided.
The 'I' before the 'you' and the 'we' that was never really one.

If there was to be no future,
I wanted there also to be no past.

Approval

My legs weakened and buckled when she told me the news.
A performance of tragedy I would not have truly believed
Had I not experienced the sensation myself.

Years have elapsed.
An accumulation of distance measured only on the arbitrary scale of time,
Not the space between ingrained feeling and unthinking reaction.

I'm taller now, but from my knees,
I still look up,
Hoping for something.

Happiness

Happiness is a precipice.

--Emily Prager, Clea and Zeus Divorce

Reality

I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren't beautiful or lucky, who try to behave well in the limited field of activity they command, but who can see, in their little autumnal moments of vision, that the so-called 'big' experiences of life are going to miss them; and I like to read about such things presented not with self pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness and even humour...

--Philip Larkin to Charles Monteith (Vanity Fair, July 2000)

Awareness

I sat on the rocks
Trying not to look as if I were posing
Yet the knowing that you were there with the camera
Forced my body to attempt an evocation of the picturesque

You took the photograph
And I was surprised - even as I expected it
A silly funny moment
Made bittersweet by the remembering of
How I would feel looking at it later