minoanmiss | POem Post: "You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake"

Antilamentation
by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

minoanmiss

I'm glad I found this and put it where I would find again when I needed it.

Sometimes I think about all the wasted time in my life. If I could have organized all that time, the things I could have accomplished... but no one manages to organize it all. One of my doctors told me a story about how going to medical school meant he neglected something else important in his life to the point of almost losing it. Plus, all these mistakes contributed to my being me. So.

Edited Date: 2023-04-16 03:55 am (UTC)

amaebi

I strongly suspect that the concept of "wasting time" in the sense of not being Productive is an exploitative product of the industrial revolution, and I cock a snook at it (at long last, having been thoroughly brought up to believe that I was a lazy idler).

Also, from the land of grotesque examples, there is a story about the monster writer Honore de Balzac seizing his housekeeper and sexually assaulting her before flinging her away shouting, "You have cost me a chapter!" Who would want to emulate that?

Edited Date: 2023-04-16 08:00 pm (UTC)

He did WHAT.

D:

It may not be true. I don't know. Cursory web search was not helpful. I think I got it from Robertson Davies.

It's certainly a vivid description of an awful attitude, if nothing else.

lavendertook

Absolutely on your first point. I have come to hate the word “productivity”. I have long hated the capitalistic invention of productivity indexes and how it is metastisizing it’s weird that the concept of “privacy” seems to be our only legal defense against it--no wonder it is a faltering one.

To make a fandom Dune paraphrase in reverse and at war with this manifestation of the Protestant work ethic: Sleep is the mind healer.

On your second point--ick!!! What a productivity-approved creep!

New poem to me, MM--I really like it.

beams at you in all particulars

vex_verlain

This is so lovely. Thank you for sharing it!

acelightning73

Life isn't ALWAYS that dreary and meaningless. (Who says life has to mean anything? Just LIVE life.)

WHAT about the unexpected phone call from the girl you loaned a quarter to in the 14th street subway station in 2008?

What about the time you simply chose to ignore all the trivia and you spent the day and night baking the most incredible desserts, and then instead of eating them all yourself you gave them to the homeless people in the subway station?

rachelkg

I think this poem is suggesting that the experiences it describes lead to, or carry embedded within them, the kind of experiences you're describing.

If you concern yourself with figuring out The Meaning Of Life, you'll make yourself miserable. Life doesn't have to MEAN anything - you're just supposed to live it, as best you can, and do your best to make the world better, not worse. What does a sunbeam mean? What does a kitten mean?

Edited Date: 2023-04-16 08:30 pm (UTC)