Tag Archives: reality

The poet as scold

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I do read your work, telling me
to be a decent sort, which politician
to love, which to despise,
how one kind of suffering
is better than another, or one
rude remark worse than another.
The ponderance presses relentlessly,
huge pendulous images of right thinking,
until I no longer feel I own my own
uncertainty, that my heart can so much as
break without first checking your litany.
Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.
Now I must be on my way or miss
the chance to do it again.

Notes for the photographer

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Don’t push too hard for fidelity
because looking at a photograph
you really have no idea
what it felt like to be standing
just this side of that sky,
feet in the mud, those foot-sized
bricks framing your heart.

Avoid the light in polar places
and try to catch the drip, drip, drip
of reality disappearing just off-camera,
those eyes aged into history
while no one was looking.

When you dip roses, even roses
into the frail cold of liquid nitrogen,
“J’accuse!” they shout.
“M’amuse!” we shout back,
sometimes in anguish, sometimes despair,
as they lie shattered around us.

Conversation in the time of paranoia

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“There’s no time,” she said,
“Any moment now will be
the too-late moment.”

“Can’t we tell
ahead of time?” I said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said

“Well,” I said, “that certainly
narrows down the possibilities,
with idiot ruled out.”

“Now you’re just being a jerk.”

“What, that’s not allowed either?”