Reflection

perfected

There’s a door in my mind that’s really no door at all:
it’s the fixation to which I gravitate when my eyes finally close.
It follows, still, after the length of a day that stretches further on,
until escaping from the memory is like a war that rages on.

I find that moment once again--over and over, once again--
yet still the subject remains the same old door as yesterday.
No new light sheds any detail, no new angle resolves the flaws
that committedly stick by me and haunt me all along.

As I shift through resilient memories displaying all the ways
I’ve mastered levels of buffoonery while idiocy reigned
among the chief of my endeavors, the essence of my choice
to be independent, sultry, and unattached above most.

Yes, my door is more than my choices and circumstances clear--
it is the summation of my declaration to stand on two feet here,
alone and upright, doubtful but full of hope
that enough wrong doors might add up into a perfect whole.

---
02.22.15
I just want to share about this poem because I am dedicating it to one source of the inspiration. Tonight, I watched an episode of Breaking Bad where Jesse was recalling a visit to O'Keeffe exhibit he visited with his girlfriend. He expressed his inability to comprehend why the artist had painted the same door over and over again. His girlfriend explained that, while it was the same door, it was always different. The day was different, the time, and thus the lighting and the shadows and even the mood of the painter were different each time she painted the door. The door belonged to her home and she loved her home. Jesse didn't necessarily buy it, or he didn't want to lose the argument, so he said he believed the artist just kept doing it until she got it perfect.

As the girl was explaining all of this about O'Keeffe's door, my mind began to connect the dots between this idea, a poem I read yesterday by DistantDreams entitled I'm Not a Poet, and my own inability to let go of my past mistakes. I tend replay my mistakes, the moments I regret the most, attempting to perfect them but, in the end, the only thing that changes is how I see the past in that moment I am reflecting on it and that, too, will be different tomorrow. A lot of my poetry, if you can even call it that, pools forth from the cascade of regrets and memories upon which I often find myself dwelling. I have been unconsciously taking these moments and, within the confines of my ability as a writer, creating something elegant out of them. Something tangible, changed, perfected. I cannot do it within reality, I cannot change the past... but here, I can run with it until I have perfected it. I do know if I am a poet, but I think this most aptly applies to what I attempt to do:

Poets take a feeling, a sound, a memory, a sight
And run with it
Never stopping
For if they halted
Doubt would catch them

Now, I just hope DistantDreams is not annoyed by the dedication or reproduction of this stanza. Thank you for reading.