Untitled

Unhappiness
is something that happens to other people, she said
of mind filled with possibilities and bursting forth with a mad desire to educate
those souls who could not know love as she knew it
how she was living and breathing and creating with every step
a monument, a vision of self sacrifice
So that not even the little that he had could dissuade her.
If there were an expression of doubt or pity that might stand in the way of her consciousness she could not see it because
Unhappiness
Was something that happened to other people.

And how could she?
When the mind is tormented with what the senses provide and what the heart will speak
What does it matter what the future will bring
If tomorrow will be the same as yesterday or the day before
And if the night will follow day?
In that moment; in that endless moment when their souls lay naked
Before the altar where they drink the sweet tears that consummate a union
There is only now.

So when she said
I am bruised and bleeding on the ground before you
I did not believe her.
For how could so cheap a thing which infected other people
Now rear its head and contaminate that vision of purity?
Suddenly the lines in the pavement that were once there to play by
Were cracks
And the sunlight that fell in your face in the morning window became a glare
Your laughter a mad cackle in the dark of the night.

But has she given over her mind’s thought to the depths of this new despair?
I have said to her this, but she does not respond.

In the spirit of poetry...

...a new favorite.

Pursuit

Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
something else. In such a way do the days pass -
a blend of stock car racing and the never
ending building of a gothic cathedral.
Through the windows of my speeding car, I see
all that I love falling away: books unread,
jokes untold, landscapes unvisited. And why?
What treasure do I expect in my future?
Rather it is the confusion of childhood
loping behind me, the chaos in the mind,
the failure chipping away at each success.
Glancing over my shoulder I see its shape
and so move forward, as someone in the woods
at night might hear the sound of approaching feet
and stop to listen, then, instead of silence
he hears some creature trying to be silent.
What else can he do but run? Rushing blindly
down the path, stumbling, struck in the face by sticks;
the other ever closer, yet not really
hurrying or out of breath, teasing its kill.

-Stephen Dobyns