a poem

Dream and Reality Mix in Unwanted Ways

If what we want is that which extinguishes wanting,

then is it death that we want?

Waiting for the new beds

Or waiting for something I-know-not-what,

A neighbor waiting,

the truck in our driveway confuses me:

what could it be?

And it's a holiday,

They should have the day off!

I speak to my mother and she says,

“It's like the time when you moved the stereo higher”,

And I seem to half-agree,

collecting from somewhere a dim memory that seems to match,

But there was no such stereo,

So, it's just a dream.

And I remember those moments of hope and expectation,

shared hopes and shared expectations,

Rich with the thought that maybe now things will be better,

Thoughts unknown since then,

But, they were no dream.

The workmen are carrying furniture across the street,

My mother studies it,

Comments,

Approves,

And I have mixed emotions,

Half thinking that I'm in no financial position to purchase furniture.

The truck has disappeared from our driveway,

but the men are carrying the furniture across the street.

Like the day they brought my mother's new stove,

Which also, in its own way,

Signaled my helplessness,

and my fading life.

I am rushing away from the present,

but I always return to the past,

The future gets my hopes pasted onto it,

but there is no one to share my hopes;

I hope alone.