By Barbara Schweitzer
In the world I don’t know,
frightful images rule,
desires confuse the senses
so that hunger can become
a new iPod or sneakers
with red lights that dance
on four year old’s feet, cardboard
can be disguised as food,
bread is money, money is
paper thin and easily
becomes mere blow in the wind.
I don’t know this world,
I don’t know. I’ve glimpsed
it iconically, only
felt it in mornings after
too much cheer or in frittery
sleeplessness or in gizzardy
stirrings of knowledge that
I am the Other of it.
I know how the body craves
balance even if it is
akilter and dangerous.
It will fight change to death
even the good and healthful
change, like a child who wants
a nickel ‘cuz it’s bigger
than the dime. Life, life
is lusty, so gregarious, so
full of itself and blustery,
so magnetically driven,
it can throw itself away
without so much as a
fare-the-well, leaving behind
the rest of us tut-tutting
studying, reveling,
so often waxing poetic,
lapping luxuries we
take credit for.
Barbara Schweitzer is a poet and playwright living in northern RI. Her work has won numerous prizes including a merit fellowship from RI's NEA allotment. Her first volume of poetry, 33 1/3 (Little Pear Press) will be released in spring 2006.