To get up and realize
that you’ve lost all hope
To make the job
everyday in the face of
no foreseeable reward
To face yourself alone
in the mirror
naked and ashamed
To continually
ask yourself
the big questions
while the television
gently moans
in the front room
To admit you’re a failure
or worse
a successful fraud
To stop trying
to wash the blood
from your hands
I’m often told,
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
or
“You think too much.”
I would rather be
guilty of these
than be guilty of
wasting
moments
of
potential
light
______
For Liz
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Very strong Rob!
Moments of potential light are bright sunshine this very day. Such a lovely masterpiece. Throw another one around the world. Your pitching arm is getting stronger.
Came here to steal YouTube code, left with a note of grace.
Keep the light on, baby. Global warming be damned…
I guess a better question might be, how many of those “moments” can a person take?
Ah, tired, cranky, going… big love to each of you…
I’ve been having mystical visions in the gym. My feet pound the treadmill to the boom-boom head-splitting binary fascist beat in the background…and yeah I loose a few pounds to ease my conscience, to please the public eye but who gives a shit when the world is blind?
And then I reach the summit of pain, not the first pain barrier mind you, by now it must be the 7th or 8th and my whole body is bursting at the seams; muscle tissue threatening to tear, legs firing on last cylinder etc etc.
But this is the point when life starts to get interesting, becasue beyond the pain I find bliss…not pleasure as some deluded ‘fetishistic’ perversion, but peace and in this strange hour I come face to face with Puritans, Zen Buddhist monks, self-flagellating Shia Muslims and any other soul who has sought and found momentary egolessness.
I like the tone of your poem Robert. It fits my frame of mood right now..
Robert, I like that you included the word “potential”.
I guess for me its not a question of pleasure or pain or bliss, but clearly seeing. Those moments are special, since even with glasses I’m generally as blind to these moments of potential light as the rest of the world.
That said, we all get a couple in our lifetime.
oh I forgot, and my bet is we get as many as we can take.
What I said earlier came out stream-of-consciousness style, which is fine, but it was a ‘response’ to the tone of the poem rather than an ‘interpretation’…both things overlap I’m sure but I think the nuance is worth preserving.
Jecklin - Yeah, I’m not one to play the “everything’s all right all the time with the right attitude” bit.
Some situations and people in this world are just nasty and wicked. Just are. No need to sugar-coat them. There’s already a big enough bright red cellophane candy wrapper over most of the pain on this ball… we might as well face it head on like men. And women.
Andrew - Your streams liven this place up. Keep on streaming my British friend (you are in the UK right?).
And I’m with you on the Puritans… even though they’ve gotten a bad overall wrap…
London - King’s Cross in da house!
That is why I chase the SUN in Phoenix. Nicely done.
AndrewE, my wife used to rave about London, & when I finally got over there a few years ago I understood why. I love it!