Category: Poem of the Day

I wish to be loved and admired,

And yet know that I am not.

I appear cold, indifferent, hostile even.

Now and then an acquaintance will say

Did someone die? And I will say,

What are you talking about?

Even though I know the answer.

Or I will smear my face with an

Idiot’s grin and flap my tongue,

Seeking what I most fervently crave–

To be left alone.

 

Sometimes that works,

And sometimes it doesn’t.

Meddlers don’t easily give up,

Appointing themselves to rescue

Others from solitude, that state

Of egocentric bliss, a place beyond

The shifting contours of expression,

Where the things they think they see,

Cannot be seen,

Where the things they think they know,

Cannot be known,

Where laughter and song cannot be shared,

With the hard, uncaring world.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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There was no collusion, they say,

And what does it mean, exactly?

That there was no praise of bigots,

No fawning over murderous dictators,

No contempt for the weak, the helpless,

No violent bending of the truth?

 

There was no collusion, they say.

As children search for lost parents,

As bombs fall like summer rain,

As mothers weep and fathers

Wander bewildered in a world

Scrubbed clean of empathy and kindness

A world of avarice and cruelty

Celebrated in song and image,

A world burning up and drowning,

A world to enter only at your peril.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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The image in the mirror

Is you or it might be someone else

How can you tell?

Have you memorized yourself

Are you certain that an imposter

Hasn’t appropriated the ego

That sets you apart from me

And him and her and them

And tried to use your credit card

And sleep with your husband

Or wife. Voted for a candidate

You cannot abide, even committed

A crime. The only way you’ll know

Is if you turn yourself in.

Let someone pore over your DNA,

Your most personal possession,

More personal than a certain shirt

And the watch that tells imperfect time

But has some forgotten meaning.

Best to avoid mirrors altogether,

Forget the length of your nose

And the droop of your chin

And the baggy weight of your cheeks

And the lips half open with an observation

That vanished before it got that far.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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Where shall we go today?

To the beach to watch the waves

Break one after another, sloshing

Onto the sand like spilled foam

From a glass of beer, a moment

Of seething drama, then the

Quick furtive withdrawl, as if

The sea knows that it has

Exposed too much.

 

Or shall we trudge into the mountains

On a broken trail, wishing for silence

Instead of the drone of an airplane

And the thrash of a helicopter

Looking for a fool who has stumbled

Who has lost his bearings and will die

Without realizing his fantastical dreams.

 

Somewhere in the sanctum of chaparral

The mountain lion creeps upon the

Unsuspecting hare, and the simpleminded

Lizard allows its tail to go missing,

Certain that a new one will grow,

And the gopher snake peers out of its hole

At humans oblivious to all but the

Sound that runs through wires to their ears.

 

Where are we? The melting sky drips

Onto the ruined earth, which pushes

Forth weeds like children, the ones whose

Parents seek admiration and esteem

For an act so common that no license is required,

No training, nothing but a desire to emulate

The endless repetition of the sea,

The jagged rise of the mountains,

That sink, slowly, ponderously,

Into the darkness of the light.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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You can lose your money,

You can lose your temper,

You can lose your mind,

You can lose your sense of direction

You can lose track

Of almost anything.

 

Once I lost my balance

On the edge of a mountain cliff

And fell thousands of feet.

Once I lost my appetite

For no apparent reason

And ate nothing but rice cakes,

Because they have no taste.

Once I lost a favorite pen,

And couldn’t write anything

But notes to myself

Which made no sense.

 

I’ll gladly lose myself in ecstasy,

Once I find its hiding place.

Someday I’ll lose weight,

But not until the bacon

In the refrigerator is gone,

And the chocolate chip cookies

Have disappeared.

 

Proust became famous

Searching for lost time.

But how do you lose time?

Does it hide somewhere,

Along with single socks

And books you always

Meant to read but didn’t,

Because you watched TV.

Is it in the dark recesses of the closet,

Or under the bed,

Or has it simply diffused

Like an odor, into the air?

 

You can have too little time,

Or too much time,

But you can’t lose time,

Because anything lost,

Can surely be found.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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My wife asked me to repeat what I had said,

A common occurrence she blames on muddled speech

Although I suspect that she doesn’t hear things clearly,

Some impediment in the sensory apparatus

Gone undetected by tests at the audiologist’s office.

If I have to ask again, she said, I’m going to kill you.

But how would she do it? I’ve watched enough TV

To know that it isn’t easy to commit a murder

Without leaving evidence of your culpability.

DNA on fibers, drops of sweat, fingerprints, blood.

There’s no gun in our house, and even if there was

I doubt that she’d use it. It wouldn’t be her style.

The knives are all dull, but she could

Smother me as I slept and say that my heart,

Which beats from time to time with imperfect rhythm

Had given up, although I think that the forensics people

Would discover the signs of foul play.

She could join me on a mountain hike

And give me a push me when I stood close to an edge,

But what if I survived, a hopeless invalid,

Or what if no opportunity presented itself?

She could poison me—the Russians know how!

But where would she get that fatal drop of whatever,

And how would she keep the fact of it from coming to light?

No, better to stay in the realm of fantasy,

To let the warning linger in air of our relations,

Which can be kept happily intact through the simple

Act of speaking in a strong, clear voice.

I’ll try, but if she wants to have the knives sharpened,

I’ll make sure to stay on my guard.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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The famous rock and roller sang,

You can’t always get what you want,

But do you really know what you want

Before you know what you can have?

 

A friend said, if you keep pointing fingers

You’ll eventually point at yourself.

Is he a savant, a philosopher disguised

As an ordinary man, a man whose

Ordinary mind turns up a nugget

Of truth, or is he a fraud, exciting

The gullible with pronouncements

So silken they’re sure to have once

Been sow’s ears.

 

You can get what you want

If you want nothing, or only a little.

A practical policy, though unpatriotic.

 

Didn’t somebody say, I want it all.

Is that person to be admired? Or pitied?

We’re cajoled into buying things we

Never imagined wanting, things we

Don’t need, things that will make our

Lives more difficult, although we won’t know it.

 

There’s the rub. What we want is knowledge,

The knowing that pricelessness is a concept

Of ridicule in the circles that may come near,

But will never open to let us step inside

And see everything we’ve always imagined

We wanted, everything that will allow us

To eagerly peer at reflections of ourselves,

To smile and say, And this is all.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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Empty spaces to be filled,

Shelf with books and art objects,

Drawer with socks and underwear,

Closet with shirts and pants,

Car trunk with shopping bags,

First aid kit, hiking gear.

 

But what of the hollow spaces

In the mind where facts echo,

Where opinions rattle like loose bearings,

And the light is so dim one has to grope

To find the way to the door.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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Standing at the window,

Watching the wind in the trees,

Overcome with sadness and remorse

For all that is gone and will never be.

A parent, a friend, an old car,

Money scattered like the brittle leaves

That flutter away in a sudden gust,

Then fall in a just as sudden calm.

They will skitter across the sidewalk

And into the boisterous street

Where a car speeds in one direction,

And a car going even faster

Speeds in the other. To where?

And why such urgency,

When the brittle crunch beneath the tires

Will fade with the swelling warmth,

And buds will appear on the branches,

And when no one is watching,

Unfurl into leaves, dark or bright,

Slender or broad, ready to dance

In a freshly awakened breeze.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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There are heroes unknown to those

Who worship the celebrities smiling

Or frowning, as the case may be,

At the supermarket checkout counters,

On TV talk programs, on billboards

That implore us to buy a product,

See a movie, take a trip to an exotic place,

Somewhere we can forget what we are

In the bigger scheme of things.

 

The woman who brings the mail,

In the heat, the cold, the rain, the Santa Ana

Winds that carry the desert’s dessicated breath

All the way to the inexorably rising sea,

Knowing that her motley bestowal

Will go, almost immediately, to the reclycling bin.

And yet she always smiles, says Hello,

How’re you doing? I knew her name once,

But now it’s gone, buried with other facts

In a hidden corner of the brain that rusts,

Not of disuse or neglect, but from an oversupply

Of information, most of it worthless,

Mistakenly allowed to collect in the belief

That it mattered. That vast knowledge would

Be the mark of heroism, when in fact that elusive

State of being arises not from anything grandiose,

But small, diligent, infinitely repeated acts

Of good will. Like smiling and saying Hello

When trudging the same drab street every day,

Bringing the unwanted mail.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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