polyform: A List of Items I Do Not Want the US Fatherland Security Dept. to Confiscate.

10.04.2004

A List of Items I Do Not Want the US Fatherland Security Dept. to Confiscate.

Shard of Steel, stolen from the Gdansk Shipyards
2 Bottles of Sobieski Vodka
6 bars of chocolate
My Gerber, aka the Tool which Unlocks the Possibilities of the Universe
Collection of old movable type letters
Book, "Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition", which could conceivably be seen as pornography by barbarian tribes like the Visigoths, the Alemanni and the Neocons.
Antique brass lighter with a secret compartment, which could conceivably be seen as a Weapon of Mass Destruction by desperate, election-season Federal officers.
Cycling tire patch kit
Small dram of Polish honeyed mead
Cache of foreign postcards
My dignity
Museum ticket stubs and paraphernalia
papryka potato chips
nice German tie for my father
handmade Polish icon for my mother
Swiss pocket watch

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Reading

"A Ritual To Read To Each Other"

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

--William Stafford