I cannot say if things are worse
Than times that went before
For I saw not that bygone world
Nor what they did endure

Where once their sight was short,
Now it's growing nearer
Starter homes that once held court
Go "green" like silver mirrors.

Elixirless were garden hoses
Plastic cups, no holy grail beneath their noses
Now all you have left are pictures
That time has robbed of hue
I study them now, and try to suppose it
The complexion hides no trace of youth:
Just spoiled cream and rotting roses
A foul-odored truth.

The trade was fair when young were the eyes
That fixed upon that crest, their prize
Now turned white with cataracts,
Still they **** it dry
And turn to bottles for babes set aside,
Begging pity for the old and blind
And anyone too far gone to toil.
"It shall be hard time," or so they cry,
"Served beneath the soil."

It's hard time indeed, that which is served
Beneath the ravaged soil;
So tell me:
Can a head that sold me, the undeserved,
Anoint itself with motor oil?

My mother and her mother,
(four generations of mothers to be exact)
All conceived children They didn't want,
because They couldn't bear the alternative.

My sister and I are the only two who survived.
The intergenerational resentment
that is cast among each woman in our family
who decides to carry the burden of their unwanted child.

My mother loves us as much as she is capable-
Just like her mother and mothers mother before her.

Birthed into four generations of hurt,
that longed for acceptance and love that only a mother could give.
But each mother couldn't.

It took four generations of women and their pain
and longingness for love,
to create two women who are full of nothing but love
and are hungry to give it to the world

(we forgive you, because it's all you've known)

seventy candles flicker in a room full

the sweet union of voices

sixty-nine times before that day

the man walked the moon when I was ten

I had heard stories and so I dropped

the mentos

as my son speared it into the sky

giggles erupted and hearts soared

As our chins tilted toward the sun