“I am I, and I wish I weren’t.”
Blinded
amid all creation
{the nonstop}
Cyclopsed
with finger
stuck
Octopi
everywhere
even,
in the third eye
*
For all attention
of detail-ed minutiae
Two feet in front
of us, the fog
**
It's not that I want
to tell the Future
something
or grab
the illustrious
knees
of God
I just wish
to see the lights
and fireflies
Not streaming
tears,
exploding
in the yard
***
Stranger danger
fades somewhat
when one
canst
look a looker
in the eye,
but maybe
that is why
it is wisdom
in this blind
strength
and sweat
having
a hand in
kerchief tied
****
I wipe our glasses,
press my lids,
like Aldous Huxley
and sigh
Crushed
It doesn't scare others
that I like the slaughter
of flowers,
and find it worthy
of our center table.
But I worry
about the ants
in funeral procession
who come
with respect
to their end,
beneath a thumb
that gently rearranges
my fragrant wilting bouquet
--This symbol
of our infatuation
with Life & Death--
only my Heart
will understand,
in the great unsaid
static shock divide,
how it is
Love also dies.
Jack and...
wall streets,
with English ivies
that choke the stars
of persons
Transposed,
black "lorsque" eyes and
migratory tonsiled vocals
singing gutterally
into the nonsilence
of night, wince
the global heart
cries,
as to Where? does small
ambition
crawl,
to untold
beanstalk heights...?
I don't want to lose us
to the abstract columns,
bookended sidewalks---
the fiction
that curdles human blood,
with salt, or twist-of-lime Realty,
downed in a gulp!
an acquired taste
we connoisseur to,
as an aspiration...
hungover
the shoulder loosely
with pompous name
like Olympus or Olympia
that could be picture maker,
or picture taker,
or landscape,
in fanciful distance...
in any case, or shelf, or reservation
a higher order, for a cold
sampling
of what every fresh foundling
knows as ferment
and decay...
otherwise known as
...Civilization...
Waking
Sleep comes easily on two feet,
no greetings or formalities,
like a nightwalker in the street;
To many shuteyes counting sheep
...in familiar realities...
Sleep comes easily on two feet.
Tail in hand, Sleep hounds, with entreat
of enlightened brutalities,
on opposite sides of the street;
Understanding we've earned our meet
in shortage, and totality.
Sleep comes easily on two feet:
Slips pistol-like from twilight's sheath.
Sleep aims at our idolatries;
Light and shadow, stalking the street.
Moon rise, a copper, on the beat
---Somnambulists 'cross all cities!
sure, Sleep comes easy, on two feet
like a nightwalker in the street.
In Blood
Dear Plexiglassfruit,
Of all the letters I may have sent, I have never written to my mother-- my real mother. I suppose I never believed that she was there, waiting, as recipient, and I'm not sure what I would have said, in years past, on paper.
My mother-in-law says she cannot imagine, as a mom, not being proud of me. She is very kind. There is pride, and Pride; and I have understood that for my mother I am on the cold inverse of the sentiment. Mother puzzles over me and makes comparisons. I tacitly admit the rationale. I make odd choices; everyone voicing an opinion, has told me as much.
Mother has graciously let it go after all, as notable, but uninteresting. We both know that I don't have anything to offer her--- I am useless as a backscratcher. There is simply nothing I can do for her, pragmatically. She has lived life as a sort of barter, with the eye on always coming up ahead. Having expected a man to take care of her, she has learned that money takes care of her. She steels herself to this state of affairs.
She told me a few years ago that, for Enlightenment, I am not ready.
(*My sister, yes; She has paid her dues, I suppose.)
I can only marvel at the confidence of the proclamation. I lay no claims, and wouldn't dare cast judgement... I guess I hadn't much thought about reaching Enlightenment, sitting out here in the dark peripheries of our misunderstandings. My childish hope was that we take care of each other.
If I were to write to my Mom, in abstraction of all that binds us in our interpersonal experience, I would write something she would likely dismiss as "dispassionate essay:"
Dear Mother,
Motherhood is not at all what I expected.
You cryptically said to me, a couple years in, when my child was almost three that "Now" I understand, and know. Truly, I do not. I rather sense some discrepancies in our perceptions and acknowledge the inaccuracy of my own viewpoints. The insinuation I feel is that, now, presumably I understand what it is to be pegged. Saddled. Of course, with affection and responsibility. Because that is the sentiment that I associate with our family reflection of child rearing-- The burden wrought.
And I observe the key differences that may or may not have been fully voiced. That motherhood "happens" in different ways. It has been expressed as lament, in our family circle, as the limitation of self. The facts remain, Mother, that you yourself said you were "not ready," and my sister though eager, was "surprised" by pregnancy. You've each countered that I was so reluctant and calculated as to "sap the Romance out of it"... well, certainly everyone's notion of such fantasy is varied. I have never doubted anyone's Love, in the short- or long-term.
I understand that having a child, or children, is tiring. The state of being on alert, all the time, is not necessarily shared by all parents though. I have learned this in watching the families of my preschool students. I also know it, from being left, so often unattended as a child, without adult supervision; under the care of my sister, two years older, and sometimes not even that. I understand the impulse that sometimes overwhelms and makes a parent want to withdraw. I have felt it.
For whatever it was that made you want to pull away, Mom, I am sorry.
I hope I never hit you, pinched you, scratched you, spit at you, demeaned you or otherwise made you feel faced with contempt. I am wracking my memory for any such incident and cannot remember. And I cannot think of a thing more heartbreaking, abusive and demoralizing. A form of domestic violence that has no legal recourse, the abuser being a minor and outside of the law.
So, as you have doubtlessly wondered: what then do I think of Motherhood? I have not found that being a parent is aww and diapers, sleepless nights, and adventures. That was understood. To be sure, I expected it to be, for lack of a better word, "work." I hoped for Motherhood, as an ideal; an opportunity I suppose. I was looking to be fully present, and now, have these constant questions: ...Have I done the right things? Where have I gone wrong? ...What can I do to make a correction for my apparent, yet undeciphered, errors? ...for surely, the evidence shows, if only in my own sight, that I am doing something not right... to have fears about my child.
Of all of this, naturally, you are unaware. You are not here; pictures sent show only smiles, and I have said nothing, except the underlying truth that yes, I am happy to be a Mom.
Perhaps it is of these misgivings that you speak of... when you say, "Now...you know."
M.
Driving Home
the fast hiss
or slow sigh
from the map
or the tire,
on a whim,
is misnamed
.........Escape
.......................
grounding itself,
prostrate, clawed,
and towed against
the universal will...
leveled, when all that
can be placed, is,
atmospherical;
the w/hole
was there,
.........dually
....................
uninterpreted