Maimonides on What Is Meant by "Vision"

Nothing ever comes true. Not the future of the American kitchenette,
nor the future of the American child. The fashion choices of space colonies
are way off. The future of retirement, say, or the future of want, is want.
The future of language is shorthand, because there are only three models
of vision. The commercial, which delineates the species of the present.
The infomercial, which dates back to pagan times. The seance,
a parlor trick that asks the souls of the dead to perform parlor tricks.
At the spiritual minimum, the people who want to kill us are also
the people we want to kill. What happened to all the problems
that disappear when you refuse to name them? They burned away like money.
No longer a dime to spare on a new appliance, unless it will work forever.
No such thing, no such thing as a self-cleaning oven.

Copyright © 2009 Benjamin Paloff All rights reserved
from Ninth Letter
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission