Sometimes I think living in a house with so many rooms
you can get lost just making your way to the fridge
should be enough. I chastise myself for wanting more.
I was led to believe this is what matters:
You look away from an empty glass of water
and when you grasp it to take a drink it is full again.
This house possesses the power of redundancy.
Rooms arranged precisely even after I push furniture
out of the way so I can practice my ballroom dancing.
My generation is the generation of futile persistence.
It is the generation of destruction only because
we are presented, over and over,
with a canvass of vast purity.
What else to do on a field of cleanliness but soil it?
We are crazy if we only clean it further.
Yet I find myself during taciturn evenings
washing my hands with a sense of urgency & danger.
The skin of my hands have become rough and jagged
as a result of constant agitated scrubbing.
The doctor tells me it is a disease.
A psychology major told me it is because I feel stained
by some type of guilt or terror.
I want to take your picture. I will keep it in my wallet.
When I have faded into the blazing whiteness of our history,
I will look at it to tarnish myself,
and from this blotch emerge, finally, visible.
I love the way this moves from the house immaculate to the stain of relationship. This is a wonderful piece.
Excellent prose. *
Beautifully expressed contemplation.
My generation as well.*
1991 is a year in history. The house motif of this poem emphasizes the selfish pose of nations, one in particular. *