Sunday, June 30, 2024

"Are you talking to me? Sept. 4, 2013

 

Each time she posts

 a poem like this,

I think of that scene

from Taxi Driver,

looking at myself

in the mirror and

asking: “Are you talking to me?”,

never truly knowing if I am

the target of what she writes,

or if I am merely imagining things,

having been so long in this dessert,

parched for any sign of anything

that might quench my thirst,

 reading things into the tea leaves

I want to read,

 rather than what is really there,

 life being too complicated

to define in any medium

 short of an epic poem,

 the rise and fall of empires,

 the slow decline of what could have been

yet never was.

“Are you talking to me?” I ask,

I get only the howl

of the dessert wind

 in response.


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