Just Because You've Had Enough Doesn't Mean You Wanted Too Much

I've been sick this week, holed up in bed, and feeling both restless and contemplative. I thought I would share what I've been reading, listening to, thinking about, since I haven't been doing much else! I really love the two songs posted above. They're both melancholy, but also a little bit sweet, and I suppose that is how I have been feeling as well the past few days- reflective and a little emotional, but not actually sad.

Spring is giving way to summer and I am in a soon-to-be transitory and transitional time in my life again, which I have mixed feelings about. This will sound basic and reductive, but I've been thinking a lot about the past and the future, and how the way we choose to describe, and consequently remember, past events can in turn affect our future actions. So, I suppose I've been feverishly reflecting on the role of language in our perception and experience of reality. I've been reading poems with "past and future" in mind, and I found two that I like for the theme. Here's past:




Poem Without Forgiveness

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt’s stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn’t it
electricity’s blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup. So in the meantime: epoxy,
the dog barking at who knows what,
signals mixed up like a dumped-out tray
of printer’s type. Some piece of you
stays in me and I’ll never give it back.
The heart hoards its thorns
just as the rose profligates.
Just because you’ve had enough
doesn’t mean you wanted too much.

-Dean Young



And future:

moving toward the dark

if we can't find the courage to go on,
what will we do?
what should we do?
what would you do?
if we can't find the courage to go on,
then
what day
what minute
in what year
did we go
wrong?
or was it an accumulation of all the
years?

I have some answers
to die, yes.
to go mad, maybe.

or perhaps to
gamble everything away?

if we can't find the courage to go on,
what should we do?
what did all the others
do?

they went on
living their lives,
badly.

we'll do the same,
probably.

living too long
takes more than
time.

-Charles Bukowski

And now here are two, very unfinished, pieces on past and future.

Past

Of all the promises I made,
we know which was the worst.
Sitting, smoking, in your driveway,
ashing into an old teacup,
I eye my well-fed cat with suspicion
the cat, who, temporarily sated,
sniffs at grass and weeds,
and turns up his nose in my direction
as though he's finally won
some game we've been playing for years,
and perhaps he has.
For across the ruins of the lawn,
I can see that I've spent my heart
as though the little pieces inside me were in unlimited supply
and he just sniffs.
Things feel distilled now,
between me and my cat.



Future

the seeds and the trees are creaking
you're winging me with dreams,
selling me to sleep
with the promise of a long afternoon
by the lake.

When all the rhyming grows tiring
I’ll sit sighing
at the inconvenient stickiness of spring,
feeling the sweet little head of the world
at the mere touch of my palm
to a patch of grass,
bracing myself against
the ecstasy of a future