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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Glass Fish

04/01/80

The river water flaps sluggishly against the posts, rare, clean, see-through water in the country's most polluted river, glistening as if covered with jewels in the sun.
The rain and wind from last night's storm pushed and pulled at the sand here, leaving streaks across its surface that from a distance look like the petals of a large flower.
The tides have calmed overnight in me and the river.
I am left with the guilt of having used my poetry badly, as a weapon to hurt someone again.
I vowed once never to do it again after a scene in a bar with one of the bitches, who thought I loved her when I found her deplorable, me unable to handle the barfly mentality.
When I handed her the poem, she thought I was handing her a complement, and rushed out of the bar after she read it.
And now, I've done it again, to someone far less deserving, and some for whom I did care.
I have not learned the art of human relations; perhaps I never will.
I keep getting boggled down with the concept of truth. What it is made up of. How it must be shaped.
This time I gave the poem to Kathy, the girl who tried to kill herself after her affair with Franz, Terry and others on campus.
I keep thinking of the old oriental proverb, the one which says that if you save a life, you are responsible for it.
Yet, too many times of late my kindness has been mistaken for affection, and my caring mistaken for love. This is a fragile world with glass fish swimming. And though I can see their struggle, I cannot see mine. They seem transparent and without substance, while I see myself as firm.
Perhaps I am the one who is transparent and not them, making my noble search for truth less viable.
Perhaps, standing here beside the river, I only think I see the bottom, when I do not.