It's hard to idolize up close

I have a collection of free verse poems I wrote between the Spring of 1995 and the Spring of 2002. I noticed that they all had a common theme. Seems I was searching for deities in humans. In retrospect, it became clear that this was very unfair of me. Who could possibly live up to that?

Here are the first and second in chronological order of writing:


GREG
from your friend Christina
written in May 1995

Someday it might just be
Images of you I'll see
In photographs and videos --
It won't be the same
As to feel you here with my own hands
To erase my hard days.

So kind, even when you criticize
Yes, that's what it is... You remind me of him
Only in pictures and memories himself now
Taken too soon to another time
But I've seen him before me again
In your gentle ways.

Will your senses lie by telling you that I'm
Not one of your kind --
Like all those girl singers?
I was born of your world...
And admitting I swore that I wouldn't go back --
Remembering how steep for them both was that hill
I was drawn in, just the same
By the comforting cradle of a life
Long familiar to me.

Your soothing voice is what I need
And not alone the recorded sounds of your hands
Directing deftly their listeners' hearts
Still, so much, my ears await those sounds --
If only I could touch their origin forever...

I said you were a butterfly
That no one should capture and put under glass
Then I wished I could build a globe around you --
A peaceful place where you might want to stay
And always be within my sight.

Just know that it would have been designed
With a clear way out -- never obstructed
For I myself know what it is
To need to be free
Besides, it's our right...

Yet here I am, helpless, my friend
Hoping that's not what you need
As I've never before found such an absence of want
As that which I feel when I'm inside your space
But if we ever say goodbye
Please don't forget me.


ANGLES OF BETRAYAL
written in June 1995

You held her in your open hands
protectively half-cupped around her
like a tiny injured bird
took good care, treated her as family
but she couldn't see the forest
and so she flew away.

For me, since seeing you again
the trees, instead, are now out of focus--
recognizing that what sits beside me
will shine brilliantly in the blue-black night
once the clouds have lifted...

It was all around her--
how could she not see?

They say a peculiar feeling comes
if lightning is about to strike you
well, I guess that's what it's like...

And soon the rest will feel it too
then I'll watch from the periphery
no longer at ease being on the inside
since nature doesn't incline us all
to vie for the light.

Is it karma that betrays us
or the planets in the sky?