POEM: The Pieces of You That Were Left Behind

There were pieces of you that were left behind
Detonated by the ordinance of living.
These are the parts I keep tripping over,
The parts I unearth when I least expect it.
The parts that leave me unprotected.

I want to see the sense of it,
The wisdom of the grief and the empowerment
That comes with clean slates washed
Anew in the blood of saints.
I want to read it like it makes sense
But it is that piece of you that I held
In folded praying hands that won’t let me understand.

It was never your memory that I recognized
By touch, by smell, and even by taste –
It was the microscopic parts of you that comingled
Atom by atom with mine,
The dust trail you could not help but leave behind
That led up to the empty space of you
Like a line of fire ants ready to do battle –
With the hope – I guess –
That no one would ever notice you again.

But they would be wrong.

In the universe of the bleeding love I have for you,
I am always your witness
And I will always notice you.


.

Culture Takes a Gansta Hit

She thought she knew art but she was wrong. She was a prisoner of the MTV culture, of a time when nuance was a foreign language, when celebrity replaced creativity.

She was surprised – I mean genuinely surprised – when she took an on-line art survey and learned that Van Gogh was not a truck rental service; that Rodin was not a Japanese bird-like monster; that Van Dyke was not a lesbian moving company.

She guessed incorrectly that Picasso was a veal dish and that Vermeer was pressed particleboard facing for cheap furniture.

She was really embarrassed though the time she mistook Proust for some energy drink one mixes with vodka.