A few of our favorite things from Peter and Patricia
Leibnitz had a point, after all,
That Voltaire's wit cannot erase:
It is a mirror-image world out there.
Slogging through life assuming the worse,
Finding malfeasance in every act,
We are encompassed by hostility.
This subjective introspection
Can be inverted, turned inside out,
To show a world where, hidden in each misfortune,
Like the tree within the acorn,
Benificent lessons lie,
Both views reflected from a neutral ground.
I knew a woman once
Who interpreted all that came her way
As due to being black,
Or being female,
Whereas, in fact,
A lot of the shit that falls on us all
Is cosmic shit,
Unaimed.
copyright ©1984 Patricia Fillingham
Why ask me all these questions?
Childhood's open hours
My mother's face, my father land--
Every time I speak
The past fades.
On this half-erased blackboard my mother's face,
Smudged around the edges,
Softly flakes away as I talk.
My uncle's beard dusts up to cover his eyes.
School friends disappear in a cloud
As the eraser strikes the blackboard.
Why do you force me, like a child kept after school,
To clean these images away?
copyright © 1984 Patricia Fillingham
