Be Careful

 

Be careful.

Before you make a next, fashionable quip about white males;

imagine yourself sending all white males

(those you personally know)

to death camps;

sell them into slavery;

destroy their shops and their right to work.

Picture imprisoning them unjustly.

Castrate them.

Rape them.

Take away their right to vote and hold political office.

Stop research into their diseases.

Lynch them for flirting.

Deny them their right to education.

Blame them for all evils in history.

If you think my caution silly,

if you know such could never happen,

then, quietly to yourself,

acknowledge:

prejudice is prejudice--­

even if fashionable,

politically correct,

naively innocent,

among good people,

good friends.

Too convenient and too blind.

Too lazy and too dangerous.

Be careful.

Be Careful
Bob Komives

Fort Collins © 2019 :: Be Careful :: 1904

 

Worthday Candle

 

         
mother and father
          hoped for good
          while
I oh I
          strove for better


          yet we found
          this final-seeming report 
here and here
          scattered around


          it says we
got and gave
          neither
more nor less
          of
worth and can
          than
one one other
          of
white and man

Worthday Candle

Bob Komives

 

 

 

Fort Collins © 2021 :: Worthday Candle :: 2105

 

" t.e.a.r. "

 

“ t.e.a.r ”

two ways to say and intend

too many ways to rend and cry

too many ways to tear and tear

 

 

" t.e.a.r. "

Bob Komives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fort Collins © 2021 :: " t.e.a.r. " :: 2103

Hand to Chin (drawing) © 2004

 

11:59

Know that fourteen lines from a forgotten little day early in Covid's Time wish to grow (with regret and gratitude) toward a thousand days and hundreds of lines among which you still find a line and more about you.

11:59PM, April twenty-fifth, 2020 

From playing bridge with you on the web, 
to reading the Life of Mahatma Gandhi with you 
     and watching a fun movie,
to our conversation over sprouting clover, 
to our socially distanced beverage-and-snack around the patio, 
to my shouts and your responses across the street, 

to our digital exchanges, 

to our greetings and smiles as you passed by, 
I had a great day today.
Please

(if you can identify)
hug yourself 
and accept this humble "thank you." 

11:59

Bob Komives

::  Fort Collins © 2020  ::  11:59  ::  2003  ::

Hope Cemetery

Do a double-take.
Read this sign again: “HOPE Cemetery"
—clear, bold, and large.

Is it not true?
With death, unanswered questions become answered questions. What remains for hope's good work? 

Hope Cemetery

Bob Komives

In life, hope has much to do.
I can live with hope to lose weight, but pallbearers will know: I did or I did not.

You and I might hope to get rich.
Will we?—a boring, unanswered question. Did we?—More interesting, perhaps, but—simply—"no" or "yes." If alive and already rich, we hope to stay that way. Yet, beneath a tombstone, such hope likely turns to smile or frown.

As to afterlife
(no matter our belief and hope) we can agree nobody looks around heaven and says, "I hope I get to be here."

In quandary I asked clear-thinking friends for help. One suggested I misread the sign, but I have faith in the quality of my double-take.

"Perhaps the message in the name is for us—not them," said others. “As we pass by we remember those who have passed away, but we should also remember to treasure each day, appreciate our ancestors, our heritage, the continuity of life.” I like these thoughts but have difficulty calling them hope.

“It is obvious”, said another, “the graveyard is for jerks, scoundrels, miscreants. Our hope is that they will stay dead.” I try to be open to this view, but—as a city planner—I think of how such intentional land use would destroy tourism and real estate value.

I warm more to a suggestion that resident graveyard hope need not be profound. “Mundane items that haunt us while alive may persist into our grave. For example: 'I hope I remembered to turn off the gas on the stove.' " That thought may well hit coffin-nail on the head.

But yet another suggestion 
allows me to puzzle no more:

  In HOPE Cemetery, hopes do co-mingle.
  Both the living and the dead hope
      to be remembered well,
      to be remembered clearly—
    remembered
      by those who once explored and opened paths
      that remain open before us,
    and remembered
      by those who will advance or retreat
      0n paths we leave behind us.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2018 :: Hope Cemetery :: 1613 

I Must Have Some Secrets

“I must have some secrets,” she once told me.
She is still shy
—still private.
Good and bad,
she diverts them
to a calm lake
somewhere inside.
I say, “Tell me,
that's what words are for.”
And, at her best,
she may drip out a drop.
She says, “Hug me,
I need something more.”
And, breast to breast,
I now feel in a flow
that
for
great
volume
force
and
silence
the noise of leaky words
can neither channel nor claim to store.

I Must Have Some Secrets
Bob Komives

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 1994 ::  ,9408

Shoulder Touch

simple hello

complex goodbye

show of friendship

request for support

request for passage

passage granted

fantasy suppressed

fantasy induced

distance reduced

distance demanded

granting forgiveness

forgiveness sought

perfect understanding

absolute bewilderment

guidance offered

guidance needed

request for delay

authorization to proceed

too much noise to speak

too much silence to break

Such a simple gesture

and complex receptor

are the touch to the shoulder

and the shoulder to be touched.

Shoulder Touch

Bob Komives

Fort Collins (c) 1994 :: Shoulder Touch :: ,9428

Is This Table Free?

  

“Is this seat free?”

“Szabad?”

“¿Está Libre?

“Is this table free?”

I ponder
the friendships;
marriages, affairs, businesses, partnerships;
transfers of tickets, newspapers, books, magazines
that begin with such question.
In my life?
Perhaps none, exactly, 
but, some important ones 
to be inexact. 

Is This Table Free?

Bob Komives

My path into marriage begins
where an angry girl says:
“I want you to get your drunken friend off my seat!” 
That was on one of the last 20th-Century-Limiteds 
racing west beneath Lake Erie. 


My discovery of relatives in Fertoszentmiklós
begins when I enter a 2-table coffee house
and say (unconsciously, but aloud):
  “Nincs szabad asztal.”
  “There is no free table.”


I begin a friendship 
when I find there to be no room (to stand nor sit)
to hear a panel discussion.
   “No room?”, ask I
from within a crowd of the disappointed.
And then, ask I:
   “Anyone want to watch basketball instead?”
from the depths of my ambivalence.

    “I do!”
responds fellow enthusiast, new friend,
from somewhere behind


I believe
(given a gift of perfect recall)
(in some room in my brain)
(across a broad tabletop) 
I could sort and recover other memories
of when something like 
  “Is-this-seat-free?” 
opens a chapter of my life.


Lacking such gift,
(synaptic tabletops otherwise occupied)

   “Nincs szabad asztal.”

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2015 :: Is This Table Free? :: 1505

Yes, Yes I Was

Yes, Yes I Was
Bob Komives

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2017 ::  1708

Falls A Road Steeply.

poem composed and photo taken while I lived in Central America

...
...

Distance and Time Expand

Distance and time expand
when we wonder
what plays in mind of another.


Is it fondness,
fear,
suspicion,
judgment harsh, or
judgment kind?

Distance and Time Expand

Bob Komives

Will we (when gap is closed)
return together to where we were?
Have we (apart)
advanced together?
retreated together?


Will we find no such symmetry?
One stuck;
other moved.
Each moved
to different place
by different route.


To now,
here now,
where distance and time shrink to zero.
When (in shy discomfort)
we report on journeys alone. 
 
Here now, 
when discomfort must yield
to celebration or to loss.
Our wondering replaced
by the joys and the pains of knowing.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins  © 2015 :: Distance and Time Expand :: 1501

Full Embrace With Fail To Do

When I write lines
I want not to change a word
as I declare them to be a poem,
but, I do and do not
until I do.

When I snap a photograph
I want not to alter a pixel
but rather to see the great image
that I saw when the shutter shut,
yet, I do and do not
until I do as an army of pixels tells me to do.

Full Embrace with Fail To Do

Bob Komives

 

When I pencil an image onto paper,
I make it over into digits
in my wish simply to share it with you,
but, I fail
because my wish is my falsehood.
I know my addiction
to finding love 
—reciprocal love—
—both gentle and tough— 
in what I do
during full embrace
with what I fail to do.

Fort Collins © 2013 :: Full Embrace With Fail To Do  ::1301

No, Say, "No!"

No,
  say,
    "No!"

Yes,
  say,
   "Yes!"

Equal in merit.
  Either good.
    If truthful answer to my request.

No, Say, "No!" 
Bob Komives

Fort Collins © 2008 :: No, Say, "No!" :: 0803

Inebriation By Optimism

featured in the book Good Day with the art of Gale Whitman

There was to be mist and then sunshine.

but we worked dry all day under cloud.
All morning
we seeded hope's anticipation.
After noon,
weeded patches of doubt.
They predict no rain for tomorrow;
we may stand dry again without sun.
Yet, as we relax together this evening
(weary and worried for our work)
we sip from good harvest past.
We rise in lightness and confidence.
We speak of sun and rainfall to come.
With few hours to enjoy before sleeping,
inebriation by optimism has begun.

Inebriation by Optimism

Bob Komives

Fort Collins :: (c) 2001 :: 0104

Day of Success

featured in the book Good Day with the art of Gale Whitman

Yesterday, our day that started well,
ended better,
brought success
not perfection
but good enough to compensate for past delay.

Day of Success

Bob Komives

Today,
our day to glory
not worry,
but ponder why we chose to worry.

Success came as it had to come
by way of gift
     we did not give
     could not control,
     could not expect,
     but did accept
     from others who assumed success
     and (by their simple gift of faith)
     made success
     all
     but
     in-es-capable.

Tomorrow,
our day to try again
to be again
humble and optimistic.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2001 :: Day of Success :: 0102

Roof Tiles Kill.

(Central America .. Hurricane Mitch .. two years after)

Roof tiles kill
      they say
      who sit on their science
      of them
      who sit with heavy delicacy
      on sparse boards above our heads
kept by earth's gravity
and the friction in their rows
      but nothing else
      to retard their dance
      to the beat underground
      trembling the sound
      calling them down
to the soil from which they rose.

Roof Tiles Kill.

Bob Komives

 Fort Collins © 2000 :: Roof Tiles Kill. :: 0011

Prefer to Write

Prefer to Write

Bob Komives

::

'prefer to write
not to speak
failing often
to voice a fact,
find example,
a metaphor
to illustrate
the complex point
we try to make
before target ears have gone;
and yet will write
try to tell
of talking well,
in words so good
no silent page
as good ever;
of listening,
so well in tune
no silent read
as tuned ever;
of sounds in words
hidden paths
in voice with acts
that written words
at best attempt
to re-create,
to illustrate
in simple tale
we want to tell
before target eyes have gone.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 1998 :: Prefer to Write :: ,9804

I Find You In Your Voice.

-->

I close my old eyes
to listen you up
through decades apart
from you whom I knew
in memory seen
but heard in my heart
to you whom I hear
in voice of hello
in words that ascend
to open new eyes
to know the new face
of you, my old friend.

I Find You In Your Voice.

Bob Komives

Fort Collins © 1997 :: I Find You In Your Voice :: ,9712

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Once Told

You told me once;
I told you why

what you started to say
is wrong.

 
You told me twice;
I thought of how

life might be
if what you tried to say is right.

Tell me again.
I hear you now

as I wish to be heard
when next I tell to you.

Once Told

Bob Komives

Fort Collins © 1997 :: Once Told :: ,9710

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