We spend so much of our lives
imagining we are en route,
always on the way to somewhere
if often not certain where that
somewhere might be.
It seems we intensely dislike
not being in motion, not focused
on the future, the destination,
never wanting to be, seeming
to dread being static.
Yet the irony is that we,
at any given moment, are
never en route anywhere
for we are, in each moment
if we are in that moment,
exactly where we are,
en route to nowhere.
He loved the simple irony of it all. His vision was failing in one eye, likely might in the other, from macular degeneration. There was a hole in his vision thanks to his macula and geographic atrophy. And being a man of words he knew the best way to describe that spot, that hole, was to say his vision was maculate. It was just the most immaculate description he could imagine.
We sit in the waiting room,
for we have grown accustomed
to waiting for so many things,
not wanting to rush a life that
appears ever more finite in duration.
We stare at our phones, struggling
to see, to help bide the time, an irony
not lost for we are here because
our vision is problematic or worse.
Erasmus said the one-eyed man
is King in the land of the blind,
and many here hope for that
period of regency before they, too
become common citizens
of a land they hoped never to see.
It is always, the artist told me,
a question of angles and elevations,
but I am sure that was just his perspective.
Dali threw all of that out, made
a pretty good living at taking perspective
out of his work, replaced by fluidity.
For Dali that fluidity resulted
in a fair bit of liquidity, which was
an irony not the least bit lost on him.
But even Dali ran out of time
before he ran out of ideas, it flowed
away from him and he did not care.
I choose to work with words,
for they are easily aligned with
what I imagine, from my perspective.
I’ve been trying to discover how
it is that those inside the beltway
elected to office, or working
for those who were elected,
have all sense of irony (and
in some cases. civility) erased.
How else to explain that for many
there can be no climate change
while the nation they serve
is bearing its cost, climatologically
and in discourse and diversity,
and still they won’t see that
baked Alaska is no longer just
a dessert at a Party or PAC dinner.
Or to be blind to the fact that
their parents or grandparents
once stared up at the Lady
in the Harbor, that they were
the tired and the poor yearning
for the freedom they would now
so easily deny others, that they
and theirs were the invading mob,
nonetheless welcomed in the
promise of an ever greater land.
Perhaps it is best I never learn
for in this world a finely honed
sense of irony may be our last,
best hope for salvaging our sanity.
In the midst of this pandemic
everyone, it seems, is offering
playlists and lists of movies
to watch during the endless
days of isolation, and so long
as the internet goes on, we may
die of viral complications, yes,
but not of boredom soon.
I have aggregated the various
lists, stricken movies far too close
to home, Andromeda Strain,
Contagion, now isn’t the time
for that deep dive into irony,
and with blue pencil in hand,
I’ve written in, then crossed out
A Field of Dreams, for sitting
in the home we built, we know
those we wish would, will not
come, and dread that COVID might.
The young man says, “I cannot comprehend
how karma can be balanced.”
The woman laughs, says, “you remember
but I was once a stripper, that I
took off my clothes, and being naked
in the presence of men was nothing,
since to them I wasn’t a person, just
an object of momentary desire, but
that life is behind me, as you know.
But as a healer, my therapies take
me to the strangest places,
like the swingers’ club which
hired me to do massages, and there I
was the only one dressed, they were naked
and I am certain at that moment
karma found almost perfect balance.”
“Now,” he laughed, “I have two
images I will carry in my head forever.”
an old writer and his words 