Waterbug

Due Deliberation

Nothing gentler than
a dog who takes your hand
in his mouth and doesn't
bite it.

Or maybe it's not gentleness,
just a pause to taste
and decide,

as when he'd beg us
for a bit of
whatever we were eating
(salad), and you'd give him
a baby carrot,

which he'd sniff,
take into his mouth with all
due deliberation,
and hold it there
for several seconds
(round-eyed, looking far away),

then deposit it
with that same deliberation
on the floor at our feet,
intact, not the least dented,

though a bit slobbery.

Dean

The good, the bad and

Not much that is bad has come
into my calm life.
I do remember one time, though.
Pedaling through Georgetown,
on my way home from work,
I got a flat.
I walked the bicycle in
to the bicycle shop and left it there,
calling you to pick me up on M street,
just past 34th, where the neighborhood
started to go bad.
As I waited,
looking for you towards Canal Road,
an older bum came up to me,
wanted some change, but
when I was unwilling to give him any,
but unwilling to leave,
started talking to me about how he'd
spent the night with a young blond girl
and wouldn't I like to be the next.

I looked him in the eye and said
"I know you lie. You are dirty,
you stink, and you have blackheads
on your nose."

Just then you came, our
old dog GI hanging out the passenger side.
The bum reached out, and GI carefully
took his hand in his mouth.
I was appalled. This man could sue.
Fortunately, no harm was done and
off we went.
Looking back, I wonder,
was there not a person there?

Pam

AttenTION!

It's a kind of faith -- a child's faith,
that if I just pay attention to bad things,
they won't hurt me. You can't hurt me,
because I'm watching you, big bully
down the block.

The faith doesn't go away just because
we're supposed to be grown-ups
and worry about bombs, inflation, world poverty --
if I pay enough attention, all
will be well.

Oddly, the opposite is an equally powerful
childhood faith: If I pretend it isn't there,
it can't hurt me.

More odd still: The second faith
requires more attention than the first;
it requires heroic expenditures of attention
to keep up the pretense that something
that is there is not there.

Please pay attention to what I'm saying,
so that I can stop saying it.

Dean

Who Knew?

Who knew Yugoslavia
was such a young country,
a solution after the first World War,
pasted together from many warring factions,
held together by Tito. (Must have been
a very dominant leader.) I, halfway
around the world, was born, grew, ignorant
of the growing pressures to disband.
May 1991, Croatia and Slovenia
declared their independence.
Then Bosnia seceded, Bosnian Serbs rebelled,
a policy of "ethnic cleansing"
represented killing of those who
didn't agree. The infamous
Milosevic, drugged, probably,
incited this. All, all, came as a surprise,
because I wasn't paying attention.
Paying attention seems to be important.

Pam

Slaves of Rabid

"Slav" -- from an old word meaning "slave".
No wonder they fight so bloodily
among themselves, desperate
not to be one another, to be
Serb or Croat or Czech or Bulgar, just
this one clan and no other,
but we become what we hopelessly resist,
and thus, Mr. Karadzic, however lavishly
you resist the slavish, you have become,
Sir, vile.

Dean

Go, Girl!

You go,
Slav!

Dean

Say, isn't that the title of a new song?

Slovenian girl,
It's love in ya, girl,
It's lovin' ya, girl,
Do-wop, Do-wa.

Pam

Slovenian Girl

When I kissed her,
she began to glow.
"What's happened to me?"
"It's love, neon girl!"

Dean

Not to change the subject but...

An old college boyfriend emailed just the other day.
He's settled in Slovenia where he works as a translator.
Hell, I didn't even know there WAS a Slovenia.
And there it is, on the map. Turns out he's
been wandering around the earth on a motorcycle
and married a Slovenian girl, ended up there,
working as a translator, grew old (like me)
eventually got on the Internet, and started looking up
old friends. What an interesting world. I never
knew him well in the first place. Now I can
not know him well all over again.

Pam

Jackals and Ides

The Ides, says Webster, fell (or maybe
still fall -- who decides
if Ides are Ides?) on the 15th
of March, May, July and October, but on
the 13th of the other months.

What were they? Days. So?
(Memo: Need better dictionary.)

Caesar was ambitious. What he would,
he did: the last person who needed to be warned
about the I'ds (the "I would"s), though in his
willfulness, betrayed even by one dear to him
(Brutus), he needed to be warned
of the "I will"s, for no man
should be an I'll.

Dean