He Who Suffers

What’s so wrong with expectation?

To keep a promise

Even just once

And what’s so wrong with trust?

To believe the promises,

Without having to believe

When we rely

On you

To save our country from its awful deeds

Does it mean we’re flawed?

Putting faith in ghost, in stranger, in machine

In the sure and steady let down

Have we asked for too many?

Have we asked not enough?

Or maybe, it’s just too much

Or too little for you

To answer these questions

In your untrustworthy acts

You blame the world for not trusting

And you’ll never listen

But I read somewhere

That he who suffers remembers.

In the Modern Kitchen

Meals at the house

Are like their arguments,

Beginning and ending,

Hasty, yet predictable

My father, he’s the angry cook

Wanting everything perfect

Something to prove

Still boyish and clumsy

Unlike the women

The kitchen did not mature him

But, anxious to please

He’s blushing, frenetic

Because he knows a work of love

Always makes an impression

So, at first he’s playful

Til the scotch melts

Cold down his throat

And disorients him from his task

And life’s frustrations, its meager triumphs

Never quite enough for reputation

Twist the feet

And sweat the palms

As the whole plate

Comes crashing down

Mixing the creation with our dirt and tile floor

Goddamit! It’s ruined!

Screams him to the air

In his tense, silent,

Death stare

Then slowly, quietly,

Like a mouse shaken white

My mother bends down

Around him,

Quietly sweeping the mess away

Consoling him on her knees

Like liberation was thrown out with dinner

And so much for my new woman arguments -

I think they too have burned cold

The Young are the Inventors

When I was little

My home was the clouds

The home I wanted

Larger than life

Its perfect chaos,

Its alone, unbothered sweetness

Nothing but blue

And a soft place to fall

With no pain, and no death, and no mind to anything

But my mind of today

To be rid of its ugliness

Walks alone

And chases the fog,

That remembrance

A sad remnant

Never reaching its folds, its covers

I’m just too old, and it disintegrated with time

Like so many of youth’s

Real inventions.