Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 10:46:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: M-TH: POEM FOR LISA, 3 MONTHS GONE


 I don't celebrate Chanukah, I don't celebrate Christmas, and I
 don't recognize the legitimacy of Kwanzaa, but I do commemorate
 events of my own choosing.  December 15 marks three
 months since the passing of Lisa, and so I would like it to be
 known that I am thinking of her in this holiday season.  To
 commemorate this sad milestone, I am submitting one of my 
 poems.  This, I think, was her favorite.  This one got next to 
 her.  Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, I miss you so.

ON SEEING THE FIRST FEW MINUTES OF 'THE DOORS'

I was working all day, I was working, 
and all of a sudden I snapped.

I remembered that moment when I replaced random feeling 
with structured understanding, hoping not to forget the primeval.

Did you not see and could I have forgotten
that with words I was seeking my own kind of love?

My soul was in my mind that saw too much.
I was scarred by the secrets of environment.

I was whipped by the shapes, the colors, the garments,
the technical implements, the relations of people, creating a 
world.

There were faces and motions, hardness, softness,
the cruelty of iron or the smiles of thighs,

Creating feeling or killing the soul.
Defiling the sublime, starved for love.

There were regions of glaciers necessitating computers:
programs to trace the movements between things.

So I used language not fingers to arouse the brain,
knowing what to say to pull you closer to infinity.

Laboring into the future, building with tools
of all kinds: metal, wood, nails, words.

You didn't know that I already knew
my experience was always in excess of my logic.

In absence of sexglow the potential energy
of the alphabet triggers mental ecstasies,

Signifying some caress jumping across synapses,
then the smiling lips, then the gentle hand, 

Leaning towards that moment never known
when desire becomes love.

Ralph Dumain
(5 February 1994, 8:15 pm EST)


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