A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
     balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
     his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
     and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
     folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
     contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
     the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
     silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
     horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
     dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or
     cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
     horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, *****,
     good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
     after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
     muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
     suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d
     neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s
     breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
     the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
     beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
     and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
     massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
     love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
     clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
     had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
     fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
     you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
     the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
     by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
     his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
     swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
     and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
     all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
     was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
     likewise ungovernable,
Hair, *****, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
     diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
     and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
     love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
     prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born
     of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
     outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
     exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
     daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
     sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
     utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
     the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
     soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
     laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
     much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
     no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
     the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
     arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
     aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in
     parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
     in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
     through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
     back through the centuries?)

8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
     times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
     than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
     that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
     nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
     soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
     that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
     father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
     sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
     jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
    ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
     finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-*****, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
     or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, *******, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
     love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
     tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
     meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
     toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
     marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
     the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Afflatus screams in mellifluous moonlight by a placid pond
Disturbed slightly by a miracle on ice deloused at a heavy price
Pantechnicons swarm as ghosts maraud around the outskirts of the forest
Suddenly the resurrected memories of renegades become conscientious
Angels swarm with fluttered wings invisible to the albatross of opprobrium
They concert themselves with chirpy dreams, itinerant crumples of amnesia creams
Marigolds are miracles at the most opportune time to be called a hysteria
Asserting the divinity of trinkets applauded that litter history with euphoria
Flinch my core, drunk on the travesty of stodgy moralism unfurled zero kelvin cold
But Salt Lake City towers above my contemplations and UFOs make themselves known
Every city this big is well in eternity and maternity very well known
Shelter not from husbandry, for Babylon is no longer idolatry
Stemwinders and poltroons with prisons crooned
Tyrannosaurus Rex still terrorizes aliens and humans alike on a stranded Dark Side of the Moon
Pink is the ****** of Mayweather and Mayflower, so rigid in rock-a-by-baby tunes
Now is "Never" but TV time "When The Music’s Over" is Bang Bane rather than Boom
Hostage tickets of English hecklers proclaiming my royalty serenade the forest green
I hear their laments of the rumors ballyhoo obscene
Imagine a forest bright, trepidation of unlikely marauders of Viking spite
Spates of jinx own the tanks, sharks (jaws of these aliens in time "Thriller") evanesce as fluttered cameras blink
Marigolds are really miracles as euphoria that plangent has never been so bold
It owned the night and owed nothing of fright to hear aliens chirp ******* penetrated so tight
To hear the orchestra of God’s minions applaud my albatross receding in plight
The swiftest musketeer aims his gun at an AIMed pun
The renegade blackmail is the rut of a guttural wedding of a none and a nun
How sad that she waits, as a ragamuffin of eternal wraiths
That speak to her dreams specifically as a barnacle waif
Genius eludes the moment of sinking eternity and Van Gogh alpenglow
Cracked screens reap grime and grim preachers that reap what they sow
Accentuated stature of imposture clutters legends urbane with glowing silt
Rigmarole of laughingstock circus with the strangest 25-year old days of a dead man Wilt
It was the steward of a day too strange to forget
It was the Newark of a Jersey of Gretzky #99, a hard-won bet
Histrionic of history, an underappreciated music is a well-worn divinity
The best music ever is the best music of time-traveled complicity
Sadly lost on inferior ears is the plangent flow of sonorous pantheons
Lost on an island of good taste in a world that prizes prosaic mellow eons
Rather than delicate paeans with hummingbird simplicity
I resent how rare my taste is in an olfactory of waste
How rare a smell is that yegg harder to lambaste
Don’t gibber the jibe of jive-talking stalk
The scarecrow in Back to the Future is a ******* heckler hawk
Rarefied abduction of stolen keys of NYPD sprees
To drivel the wharf of piedmont rifts in Heaven’s eternal leaves
Time to step back from the sidewinder missive
Time to crack the gravy epistle so dismissive
Non-linear experiments in time and memory crave recognition
Finally I learn that house arrest is a Home Alone good enough for a virtual reality prison

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty of you,
letting you see how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.

And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking off you. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty
of you, letting you learn how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.

And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

Simplest of names,
So plain, But how I love to say it
A promise for warmth in igloo block prison eyes
And tone of Daria,
just whelmed enough to respond
A chance of sarcasm is air
Venom in plain daylight.

Plain tone.
Plain mood.
Plain old abuse.
And most would take it from her.
As she would and certainly has taken it from us.

Petit feminine fighter with no haymakers or KO records.
****** face, that rested war and peace between chin and brow.
Baroness of motherhood or is it the queen of hearts and depression?

Stars and music always forever
Anchor tattoos with a key to a heart, now a predator.
Forever enchanted by the la-de-dah and bleeding heart affairs
A savior in no motion or fashion but I dare not call you hypothetical

But a standard broad, beauty and-
So shameless I celebrate seeing you, awkward and so ****
Cleopatra, to be a bit dramatic-
Yes Cleo-mantra, I collectively disintegrate all charm and physical form
And you,  unfazed or unimpressed with either detail of romance

My friend, compromised by style and NO amusement.
There is much more to you than ****** faces and belittling arguments.
There is more to you then practicing soapbox rants in your kitchen.
There is more to you than a shallow mothers intoxications and material.
There is more to you than the new hair dye or the wigs you collect.

The things you store in the boxes cluttering your room with everything not in those boxes
The clothes on your floor, decorations from your teenaged 3rd or 4th personality.
The smell of perfume and coffee and more perfume all over,
stuck to papers, next to wine bottles, borrowed and never returned books, unfinished snacks,
used paper towels, lipstick stained mugs and glasses, your sons toy I stepped on 4 times,
pictures of gone lovers and notes, your license; now found again after the second time ordering a new one.
And…it's expired,
Then finally under the aftermath of years, doubt, clutter, your cell phone vibrating in the fray of sheets.

"found it."

Least we forget that, as we forgot we are both in this room together.
You are so much more than this mess I picked up for you countless times
And though I complain I will pick it up for you and not ask your permission
I won't scold you, I can only exhale failure and help.

Staring blankly into your screen discussing all genres of worldly horror and ways to divert.
Such plans and opinions but no federal funding!
We would pay homage to girl power and the early 90's and call her G.I. Jayne-
(Or not cause she doesn’t have that kind of sense of humor.)
But imagine a solider, a true solider of the meek.
That is theoretically, G.I. Jayne.
Has all of our best interest at hearts, our hero.
Songs of children are said to give her strength-
(She really doesn't like this kind of humor, I must move on.)

My friend truly distressed by the world she can't control from her tiny screen.
I place all comfort I can to her and understandably rejected like a stranger making rounds.
No trust comes from her nowadays, None for me at least. I can't speak for all.
I try to climb over the steep absurdity, alluding to her self-mutilation and task this is
but not going as far as just telling her this is ******* killing me.

I have no lesser or sophisticated words.
I'm dying every time we reach these altitudes.
Fingers and my tone raising at every disagreement .
How you can break me down to my atomic core and decimate miles of friendship.
My closest star in the sky, use to bring me morning tea, flowers and maternity
We now stand in quasar as our space and stardust find mass in thousands of millions of years in development
For me to be sent to the loony bin and you to prison like our heroes from Clinton to Lazaretto.

I don’t have faith.  
I just know that I belong to my Savior Jesus.  I met her once when I was 11, at her humble single wide in a cramped trailer park and she made candied walnuts on a hotplate.  I didn’t find out until years later that she paid for my scholarship.  She had passed on by then; I wish I could have thanked her.

He arrived at Juvenile Hall at 7:00 pm looking like Mrs. Santa Claus, to take me into her home for a year.  I made some sarcastic teenage comment about the stupid country music on her car radio, and she tolerated it with a smile; saying ‘its not stupid, its simple.’ She showed me what a caring family looks like and didn’t kick me out for being a smart-***; gave me chores and a curfew to show me I belonged.

When I had no family or boyfriend in my life, I lived in a maternity home until my baby would be adopted.  Jesus was the stranger in the hushed hospital room holding my hand, after the medics couldn’t find the heartbeat in the ambulance, which was confirmed on the maternity floor, and I was taken to another floor so my crying wouldn’t upset the other mothers.  The room was small and dark and alone, and the clock on the wall took an eternity to move two minutes, for the entire night that I was in labor, the longest night in my life.   I didn’t remember someone holding my hand; I was so drugged for pain.  She showed me her arms two days later, so bruised because she didn’t leave me.

Jesus was the woman from Planned Parenthood on the other end of the phone, listening to me when I called the Women’s Clinic asking how I could find a doctor.  ‘ I just moved here, and I work at a minimum wage job, and I lost my baby a month ago, but how do I get a post-partum exam when I don’t have a doctor, or any money, or insurance?’  I was very matter of fact about it, I mean this was my circumstance and what to do?  She arranged a birth control exam because the state would pay for that, by a doctor who would give me the post-partum.  She also referred me to a support group.  I had been alone but she found me people who understood and could sympathize and help me accept grief.   I look back on that now; there were no sign-carrying Christians or Churches arranging the adoption who helped me, she was the only one who cared.

With a personal trainer and a former Olympic champion for parents, it's no wonder that Summer Needs is a little water baby. The six-week-old daughter of Rebecca Adlington and Harry Needs has only just arrived into the world, but she's already enjoyed a dip in the pool three times.

Becky, who has previously said that giving birth was harder than winning her gold medals, has opened up about her baby's first swimming lesson – and how much motherhood has changed her life.

"It was absolutely brilliant," Becky told HELLO! Online of Summer's first dip. "You never know how babies are going to react but Summer was absolutely brilliant in the water. When we first bathed her, she just screamed the whole time so I was a bit worried but now she loves bath time."

Baby Summer was just three and a half weeks old when she first had a splash in the pool, and since then, new parents Becky and Harry have taken their daughter back twice.

"We both love being in the water so for us, it's amazing that we can take her in and share this family time together," said Becky. "Harry and I go in the water and pass her to one another and take turns going under the water. She comes back up, blinks a lot and there's been no tears at all. It's going really well so far."

Calling it her best memory yet, Becky, 26, added: "That's the one thing I was so excited about, taking her swimming and buying the costumes. She can't do much at this stage – we can't take her to the zoo and she doesn't really play with toys yet – but swimming is the one thing she can do and we can all do it together as a family."

Speaking about her little one, Becky, who says Summer has her eyes and Harry's nose, said: "She's really content. She's really laid back and chilled but when she wants something, like her ***** changed or she wants food, she definitely lets you know about it. She's a bit feisty in that way and she doesn't give you much warning.

"It's like, 'I want it now'. And you have to let her scream for a little bit while you get it ready and you're like, 'Okay Summer just chill out, you've literally gone from fast asleep to bawling your head off!' She's a bit impatient like us as well."

While Becky has been on maternity leave, personal trainer Harry went straight back to work after one week, but the nature of his job – working in the early mornings and late at night – has meant that he hasn't missed out on taking care of Summer during the day.

"Harry's definitely hands-on," said the former Olympian. "He's been changing her and feeding her. We share the responsibility and he's around for everything – he's seen Summer smile for the first time. It's hard for him because he's juggling work with family time but he's been absolutely amazing."

The Mansfield-born star has fully embraced her new role as a mother – something she has always wanted to be.

"Life is completely different but not in a bad way," she admitted. "You have to plan a bit more, you can't just walk out the house, but at the same time I've always wanted to be a mum.

"It's amazing how you love your baby straight away. You can't really explain it, you can't describe it. People spoke to me before about unconditional love and that you'll do anything for your baby, but you don't really realise it until it happens to you. It's bizarre because you don't know them and they don't know you but you just love them so much. It's absolutely amazing.

"It's definitely been life-changing but I guess it'll change when I go back to work, when Summer starts nursery. You have to accept that life will never be the same again but that's what's so exciting."

Describing motherhood in a nutshell, Becky added: "I'm such a family girl, it's amazing having that family time. It makes you realise that that's all you really need in life, as long as your family are happy and healthy then that's all that matters."

It's early days but the couple have already spoken about having more children.

Becky said: "About two days after I gave birth, Harry asked, 'So babe, when are we gonna try for another?' I said 'Not yet, I need my body to recover!' Nine months being pregnant is a long time! We do want a big family and we'd like a close age gap between our children, but we also want to give our time to Summer."

Becky, who has partnered with HUGGIES® Little Swimmers®, is encouraging all parents to don their swimsuits and have fun with their little ones in the water – even if babies and children are a little hesitant at first.

"For a kid who's absolutely tiny, that big pool is very, very big," said Becky. "Parents should recognise that each step is a huge achievement. Even if their child is just sitting on the side with their feet in the pool, that's better than last week when they just stood around.

"It's about persistence and taking them swimming regularly, and then that fear will disappear. Also taking them out of their lessons and going together as a family is good. If your children see you in the water as a parent, they'll know it's not a scary place."

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All dressed up in her mother’s cigarettes,
Which she has put on to impress the women on the sidewalk
Gossiping about someone’s dead husband.    
The way her knuckled fingers pinched the parched paper,
A string of smoke spreading in gray air,
Was inherited from her mother,
This along with her loneliness.
She never had a daughter to share it with;
A century’s tradition of absent intimacy and substitute truths ready
To cease when her lungs do
And not be missed.

As I sit outside “Motherhood Maternity” store
in the comfy chairs.  Waiting for sticky buns,
writing thoughts of what some call poetry.
The little mothers-to-be go in,
smiling and happy.
Some waddle in, others still may have
that FUN coming in the future.
They are fun to observe
all expectant like.  Anticipating
the new life growing inside -
BOY?  GIRL?  Of course some
wanting it OVER - NOW!
And I can see why.

Then, occasionally there is a parent
passing by, ragging on their child
over nothing.  Making life miserable
for all within hearing distance.  
Destroying the young spirit.
I'll bet they were not smiling like the others
going into “Motherhood”.  Maybe they
are looking forward to eighteen and
want it to happen – NOW!  Poor kid.

******.
A symbol of denial, congeniality, and assurance of love;
the fate of maternity, motherhood, that is witnessed
and cherished from afar.
From a sacred little haven;
from a struggle of motherly defense.

O ******!
Temptations are to you never a bother,
in the tempests of lush dreams,
the draining of purity,
and veritable sensations.
Steadiness is your notion;
it barely leaves your mind
you may be deeply hurt
but never hurt,
you may be a stranger
but your grace is your power.

Truth that is unpardonable,
veraciousness at my simplest words,
clarity that is gleaming in your eye,
a token of pleasure but indestructible affection;
adorable as you are,
serenity is beyond question;
dreams are but inseparable from your docile life.
O ******, the sweetness and gentleness of thy eyes
are my irreplaceable silence,
my appraised soul,
and my most resolute
and irrepressible invocation.

O ******, one that is so rare a rose
Many as in the May-day dance are tainted;
marks of annoyance, omens of indulgence.
With hunger for nothing but moans;
unsober groans, and quickening breaths in paces of outward satisfaction;
intoxicated desires but unloving movements;
on the grounds for endless dancing;
there is the thirst for grips, the grossest of stateliness!
Voluptuous romance, perfidious touches, and
false-hearted toys!
In the wakeful dreams of which
I long for you, a handful of thy chastest kisses!
I pray for your hands, so delicate
as mine, how they shall fit into each other!
I long for your lips, your spotless, uncorrupted cheeks,
My demand is for your hands;
for sanity, and sincerest cordiality
Despite of my guilt and former unconsciousness
I shall amend my grief for you,
for you only,
for oureth perfect, unconquerable happiness,
and the union of our souls
in a day of holy matrimony.

She served humanity throughout her life

   "   dedicated herself to the cause of mankind

Literally,she's a woman

But,in reality she's a mother

Not only a mother

But,she's a sacred mother

Because,her maternity isn't for sake of her own

Her maternity is universal

And,so that she's real life Mother-India

In reel we seen Mother-India

But,she's the real inspiration

An emblem of sacred maternity

And,so that she's Mother Teresa-Written on 24.09.2012

Listen to the night ascend, and fade, as dawn approaches,
The trees weep tears of acceptance,
Brightly colored music is thrumming through the air.
A low and continuous chorus coinciding with the dawn of eternity.
A vibrant homicide of hopelessness, a resuscitation of elation.
We are together now.
Fear not the path into the light.
Today we will dance in the sunlit wilderness,
The radiant tongue of the sun covers us in slick moisture,
Our fluid bodies twirl, arms enfolding.
Embrace life like a maternity ward,
Full of limitless potential for love, chaos, violence and kindness.
As we release gamma waves, warping our world,
Shaping what we choose,
Embrace life like a maternity ward.
Negativity seeps out of us, and evaporates.
Our lives begin today.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


At the hospital receptions
In the maternity unit,
Where children are manufactured
Standing uneasy is a young and bearded man,
Prosperity bound in the sparkle of the eye
His wife in the labour pain inside the maternity wards,
Himself anxious waiting for the newborn to be
Jumping at any nurse coming  in and out,
To ask for the latest tidings from the inner world
From which came a nurse over jubilated,
With the news about the new born
Ready to spread on the anxiety ridden father at the door step,
To which he broke the wonder most news;
Man! Look, your wife has given birth to a bouncing bisexual baby!

Motherhood

Smothering mothering is what she is best at.

Gathering her smattering of children

and racing to grace them with her persistent worship.

Her life is outlined by her finding

new things to admire regarding her juv’niles.

Living and breathing her maternity;

feeding and cleaning and watching and working.

Defined solely by her motherhood.

She remembers the day the stick turned blue, “wow for **** up the spout”
He remembers her smile when she told him.  Smile, really?
Then there was telling her parents, “okay we'll make this work”
Then there was telling his parents, “You threw your scholarship away for this *****, you're a *******”
She remembers the morning sickness
He remembers the hangovers
She felt warm inside when he said it was her choice
He felt like dying when she said she was keeping it
She framed the first ultra sound photo
He deleted his Myspace page
She noticed the day she started showing
The same day he noticed the legs on the waitress
She was snickered at behind locker doors
He quit the team
Her mom brought home baby shoes
His mom circled the classifieds
She got peanut butter cravings
He got hand gun cravings
It's a girl
It's a girl
She remembers finally talking again after four months
He remembers being cornered after 3rd period
She wanted to pick names
He wanted to hang up
She remembers their second first date
He remembers how nice she was
This could really work please kiss me goodnight
We'll see how this goes please don't kiss me
The doctors say the shadow on the ultra sound could be nothing
What if the thing on the picture is something
She prays for the health of Amelia
He begs God to do something about this
They have such a bright future ahead
He had such a bright future ahead
She goes to Goodwill for maternity clothes
He rings her up at the cash register with a kiss
She remembers buying baby clothes at the mall
He remembers how cute the onesies were
She sees him smile
Amelia...good name
She's due next week
He packs his cleats to make room for the crib
She packs to move into his house
His dad packs for a motel
She's still craving peanut butter
He's still craving the waitress
She ate peanut butter
He ate the waitress
She's in labour
He's in traffic
Hold my hand
Ouch...Okay breathe honey...ouch
There's no crying
Nice, quiet baby
Amelia's dead
I'm not a father
She cries into her shirt
He leaves the hospital
She cries into the onesies
He returns the crib to Wal Mart
She burns the ultra sound photos
He grabs his cleats
She gets a hair cut
He quits his job
She returns the diapers and shower gifts
His new Myspace says “single”
She shops for a prom dress
The waitress finds out he's seventeen
Her mom hugs her as she falls asleep
His dad pats him on the back after wind sprints
She can't stop starring at him during prom
He wonders if she went to prom
She writes Amelia in bubble letters on a piece of paper she hangs on her wall a reminder of what's important
He buys a Costco pack of condoms and tacks one to the wall a reminder of what's important

There is a man at the coffee shop I frequent
He sits in the same corner in the same sweater
And hasn't missed a day since I've moved there
I've never seen him order a coffee, but he always has one
Never seen him eat, but he isn't small
And all this man ever does is take notes
He's got a pocket size notebook
A twenty five cent pen and a mustache
And the only time his hand stops writing
Is to take a drink of coffee
He's not normal
I could tell it the first time I saw him
He writes like chipmunks eat
Keeps it close to his face
I hope one day I'm flipping through case studies
And find his
It'd be about interactions
Or communal relationships
Or some fancy way of saying strangers don't talk
They only judge from afar
It'll have won whatever literary prize they give for that kind of thing
Changed the way people thought about each other
Books will be written about the book he wrote
And his little notebooks and twenty five cent pens
Will sell at auctions for thousands
But that's wishful thinking
He's different
I knew that the first time I saw him
I've gone through a lot of scenarios
Character development for a novel
A series of short stories derived from first impressions
Of everyone who comes in
A poet without a laptop
Maybe even a hit list
But he's unusual
I knew that the first time I saw him
This isn't something normal people do
He isn't making believe
He's making friends
I imagine he hasn't had too many in his lifetime
He's probably not been very good at it
So now he's just making them for himself
Taking notes on their likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies, occupations
Eavesdropping the CIA would be jealous of
All so that after closing time
He can go home to his studio above a repair shop
He pays for with social security
And have conversations with them
I can picture his closet full of clothes
Male, female, juniors, adults, maternity
He talks to an empty space on the other side of the room
“Hey, how's your day?”
He takes off his clothes puts on a dress
Walks over to the dead space turns around and says
“Good, hey you look sad is everything alright?”
Takes off the dress, puts his clothes back on
Walks back across the room
“Yeah, it's just that Gary works in engineering, I had him pegged for a dentist”
Changes again
“It's okay, people aren't always what they seem,
Besides I like engineers better than dentists”
“I know” he says back to her
“That's why I think he'd be perfect for you”
“Oh no, no more blind dates”
“Yes I'm serious I think he's the one for you”
“I do so bad at these things”
“Well I'll just have to ask him for you, are you available tomorrow night”
“I guess”
He changes into a third set of clothes,
Then a forth,
A fifthAnd before the sun comes up
There's been a marriage
A hockey game
A lecture on physics
And little Tim had a cello recital
He's dangerous
I knew it the first time I saw him
One day Nikki won't answer his phone calls
Sam won't have a new lecture prepared
And he'll come back to the coffee shop
And make them,
Teach them a lesson,
Exact revenge,
Or maybe he'll just throw away their outfit
Either way ****** is just a mind set
He could win an Oscar for his portrayal of any regular in here
But they've all disappointed him a time or two too many
He's not that different
I've learned that over time
He's got more friends than I do
But none more alive

Put on a clean shirt
before you die, some Russian said.
Nothing with drool, please,
no egg spots, no blood,
no sweat, no *****.
You want me clean, God,
so I'll try to comply.

The hat I was married in,
will it do?
White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny array.
It's old-fashioned, as stylish as a bedbug,
but is suits to die in something nostalgic.

And I'll take
my painting shirt
washed over and over of course
spotted with every yellow kitchen I've painted.
God, you don't mind if I bring all my kitchens?
They hold the family laughter and the soup.

For a bra
(need we mention it?),
the padded black one that my lover demeaned
when I took it off.
He said, "Where'd it all go?"

And I'll take
the maternity skirt of my ninth month,
a window for the love-belly
that let each baby pop out like and apple,
the water breaking in the restaurant,
making a noisy house I'd like to die in.

For underpants I'll pick white cotton,
the briefs of my childhood,
for it was my mother's dictum
that nice girls wore only white cotton.
If my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I've worn.
Still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of Clorox and Duz.
Being sixteen-in-the-pants
I would die full of questions.

One night
I was a werewolf,
but that got out of hand.
One night
you were a peach,
but I preferred fresh
over canned.

The blood scent was strong
and on your collar,
or was it spaghetti sauce?
We meandered in
the lost city of angels,
but those women
in the maternity ward
were better shape-shifters.

Couldn't see if the moon
was full against
the polluted skyline,
(but I bet it wasn't).

Then somewhere
down the tracks,
the howler (that's you),
half a dream away
on some deserted block,
and flat on your back
like a pancake,
with the nightmares
stacking up,
and dripping
with strawberry syrup.

Or was it blood?
(I bet it wasn't).

Laying in an ice cold room,
IV in my hand,
I close my eyes and plead with god
Trying to understand .

" im sorry we cant save it ,
But theres a chance that you could die;
I know your in a lot of pain
And Its ok to cry ".

I feel my husband squeeze my arm,
Im trembling in fright  ,
Im sad and im defeated
And I dont have that much fight .

" Your bleeding into your belly
We need to operate right now ,
Continue to be strong for us "...
.....But i just dont know how.

A foggy conversation ,
And their whisking me away ,
My eyelids get real heavy
And i just start to pray.

Waking up to quiet ,
Im tired and im sore ,
Depressed without a baby
On the maternity floor.

God must have a plan for me
That i just can not see ;
Even through our struggles
Whats meant to be ...
Will be .

Helen sends me scraps of poems for repair.  "Shreds of lettuce," she calls them. I fool around with them in my role as Poetry Doctor (see my banner photo). In her extended absence, I will post our convolutions. While the final product is mine, the vision, the imagery, the notion of the poem is all hers and therein lies the true authorship.



From Helen, Dec 2
Here is the last of the salad,
dressing not required...

savoir-faire [?sævw???f??

Upon a plate
of deliciousness
the lettuce
is usually
pushed to the side
to wilt
and be scrapped
into an
Industrial bin
were we all begin
as fodder for worms
turning garbage
into words
Nourishing
nothing
but our own pride



bon appétit
Helen
---------------

The Human Word Salad

Now it is dressed....*


all poems, no exception,
the bad, the exceptional,
all begin
in an
industrial bin.

wormwood,
wormword
the ancestors,
feast on the scraps,
garbage letters discarded,
the wilts of alpha lettuce,
the word waste of the
every day beta jabber,
plate pushed-aside decorations,
all but none, bystanders

and they

turn them into words,
though inedible, incapable,
of nourishing life individually,
yet their recycled deliciousness,
unquestioned.

when
each sole word,
re-birthed in the compost
of the delivery room of that bin,
meet in the maternity ward
of our minds
words wed,
poems form,
and all the true nourishment
the world needs
begins anew.

She served humanity throughout her life
   "   dedicated herself to the cause of mankind
Literally,she's a woman
But,in reality she's a mother
Not only a mother
But,she's a sacred mother
Because,her maternity isn't for sake of her own
Her maternity is universal
And,so that she's real life Mother-India
In reel we seen Mother-India
But,she's the real inspiration
An emblem of sacred maternity
And,so that she's Mother Teresa-Written on 24.09.2012

A bond grows into
a form long and sharp, shining
with thin deception.

The knife stabs through her
unceremoniously.
Satan waits to chew.

Within the briefest
moment, the knife releases
spermatozoa, the seeds.

Earnestly sowing
themselves into her innards,
she writhes, expecting--

The lumbar region
swells in perverse production--
Mock maternity.

The formation of
a placenta from the spine--
Woeful womb of Hate.

Betrayal as long
as the knife from which it came,
borne long after Birth.


-LP

These are poems for the victims and survivors of the Nashville Covenant School shootings.



Nashville Covenant Call to Love
by Michael R. Burch

Our hearts are broken today
for our children's small bodies lie broken;
let us gather them up, as we may,
that the truth of our Love may be spoken;
then, when we have put them away
to nevermore dream, or be woken,
let us think of the living, and pray
for true Love, not some miserable token,
to command us, for strength to obey.



For a Nashville Covenant Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails, when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream while winter scowls
and nights compound dark frosts with snow?
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live nine artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...


Epitaph for a Nashville Covenant Student
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



As springs’ budding blossoms emerge
the raptors glide mercilessly.
—Michael R. Burch

I wrote this haiku-like poem on 3-27-2023 after the Nashville Covenant school shooting massacre.



This poem is for mothers who lost children at Nashville Covenant and in other similar tragedies...

Childless
by Michael R. Burch

How can she bear her grief?
Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight
Of one fallen star.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the Nashville Covenant survivors

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Nashville Covenant Call to Action
by Michael R. Burch

We see their small coffins
and our hearts break,
so we ask the NRA—
"Did you make a mistake?"

And we vow to save the next child
for sweet love's sake,
but also to protect ourselves
from such heartache.

The lives, safety and happiness of our children depend on our ability to persuade the NRA and its political lackeys to stop exalting money and political gain above the life, liberty and happiness of innocents. What is the cost of banning assault weapons, compared to the ultimate price innocents pay when they are used by madmen playing Rambo in classrooms and theaters? Ironically, just hours before the Sandy Hook massacre, in a weekly column that I wrote for the Nashville City Paper, I pointed out that right-wing politicians are not just demanding the "right" of citizens to bear loaded handguns into restaurants that serve alcohol and bars — a combustible mix. No, people who call themselves "conservative Christians" in collusion with the NRA and its gun lobby are demanding the right to carry assault weapons everywhere ... which "logically" means into universities, high schools, grade schools, kindergartens, pre-schools, Sunday schools and maternity wards. When I wrote this, I was speaking ironically — I thought — but then a few hours later the NRA and its political minions made me seem like a prophet.



Sandy Hook Shooting Gallery
by Michael R. Burch

If we live by the rule of the gun
what can a child do,
but run?

Sixteen of the students who died at Sandy Hook were six years old; the other four students were seven. I wrote the poem below for another child gunned down by a madman. While we cannot legislate sanity, we can be sane enough to legislate away the "right" of serial killers to purchase assault weapons so easily. We can defend many small victims from such carnage, if "we the people" have the wisdom and the will to defend them.



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born
on September 11, 2001 and died at age nine,
shot to death ...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm — I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring — I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the brutal things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short ... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here ...

I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bear them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings left 27 students and educators dead, and question our nation's sanity and resolve to put children's lives above money and politics.



This haiku makes me think of the students and teachers of Sandy Hook, who were trapped in a war zone:

War
stood at the end of the hall
in the long shadows
—Watanabe Hakusen, translation by Michael R. Burch



Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we'll discover what the heart is for.

It seems to me that the NRA has declared a war — an open season — on our children, by insisting that assault weapons must be available to every Tom, **** and ***** Harry. But what will we, the people, say and do?


Whence Now?
by Michael R. Burch

Grown darkly accustomed to grief,
will we ever turn over a new leaf?



Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

The three students shot and killed in the Nashville Covenant School massacre were all nine-year-olds. They were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. Three adults were also killed in the shooting: Cynthia Peak, Mike Hill and Katherine Koonce. It is no longer good enough to talk about loving our children and praying for them to be safe. We have to protect them from mass murderers armed with assault weapons. The alleged serial killer, Audrey Hale, was reportedly armed with an AR-style rifle and an AR-style pistol. In more civilized nations citizens cannot legally purchase such military-grade weapons. The Nashville Covenant massacre marked the 19th shooting at an American school or university, so far in the first three months of 2023, according to CNN.

Keywords/Tags: Nashville, Nashville Covenant, Nashville Covenant Presbyterian School, school shooting, shootings, massacre, children, kids, students, child abuse, gun control, America, United States, USA, death, deaths, ******, serial ******, massacre, bereavement, class, classes

I type in that old address
expecting google not to show a house
to show the empty lot
that from what i heard
was the result of putting a dishwasher
into the kitchen
and causing complete septic failure
that flooded that entire uptown PA acre.
But, it flies me there
and I cry a little
because it's an old picture-
the house is still there,
just as i remember it;
an empty lot to the side,
the dilapidated apartment in the back yard,
the shed at the end of the driveway
(which was just a couple of cement tracks
slightly thinner than the pathfinder tires)
the apple and pie cherry trees we used to climb.
the alley in the back
where we used to skip rocks
and run from the neighborhood dogs (and cats)
looks the same as well,
every car the same,
every empty house still empty,
every tipped trashcan still being tipped each week.
I go down every street I used to walk,
they're all the same,
the bus stop is still where it was
the trails are just as long and dark as they ever were
and each yellow yard looks just as it always did in midsummer.
the ponds in the park are still the same color
with the same algae growing in them
and the same overgrowth hideaways around them.
A mile down the road;
the mini-mart where I bought gum when i had money
hasn't changed a bit,
even the pink umbrellas are still in front of the smoothie bar
but, across the street
the used book store that i would get lost in is gone
and from there i notice subtle changes:
the blackberry bushes by the middle school,
that mom made multiple cobblers from, are gone,
the maternity store moved,
the shed that my stepdad first told us would be our new house,
(before showing us this place)
has been torn down, or fell over
(as i assume it did),
and it doesn't end there,
I practiced my eye in the small details of this small ****** of the world
even though i never talked to anyone
in all the hours i spent walking.
But i guess I remember so well,
because, four-and-a-half years later
I still consider that house home.
that house where my brother was born,
where i first went without my glasses, and liked it
where I was first given the freedom of a bus pass
and permission to leave the house,
where i had my first (and only) overnighter
where i first became addicted to cleaning
where i've packed so many memories
that i can understand why the sewage line broke
sometime after that picture was taken



©Brandon Webb
2012

The winter can not destroy the miraculous invincible seeds.
The germination  changes them in the earth's maternity.
It is a new life running time , the snow irreversible recedes,
And a new spring embraces  the magical fertility.

When the deep seeds germinate, they  always  throw out a few anchor roots.
Those splintered cracks of deep roots trying to hide inside the soils.
The tall trees need deep roots and long branches to bloom and to bear sweet  fruits,
The land receives , nurtures the life it essentially contains.


When the  great divine spark leaps from the divine hand to the human hand,
Making the human roots so deep as they  face the stormy time,
Moreover, taking an ultimate shape in the law of the  green land,
While life becomes a moonlight sonata,life which is  sublime.

She was wheeled into the maternity ward
With pains minutes apart.
The doctors knew that they would have to start.
An hour later she gave birth to twin boys
You could see in her face she was full of joy.
She had complications that the doctors did not see
And she began hemorrhaging , she started screaming
I don’t care what happens to me , but please
Take care of my babies.
She died that very day, and the twins
Had no family with which to stay.
They became wards of the county, and up for adoption
They would go, but adoption moves very slow.
The doctors found that they had dwarfism syndrome.
Which did not allow them to grow
Which was something the mother did not know.
Growing up with the other children, they was teased
And laughed at because of their size
And that made them open their minds.
They knew that if they wanted to accomplish
Something in their life, and not have anyone ridicule them
They would have to find a friend.
Someone that they could confide in and tell their troubles to.
So this is what they set out to do.
There was a woman there who taught them the true meaning
Of the word HOPE, and with that they learned to cope.
She always instilled in their minds, that they could
Be as big As their dreams, for with HOPE
Anything Can be achieved.
To reach their goal there would not be any hesitation.
For HOPE was fueling their determination.
They received a scholarship to the college of
Business administration. They were filled with joy and exhilaration
Being dwarfs they had a lot of adjustments to be made
But they were strong, they were not afraid.
They both got jobs in an accounting firm
And doing this they did learn, they learned how
To run a business starting from scratch
And there was no turning back.
Now as the business started to grow, they took
Care of the woman that they did know.
For she had became a mother to them
They considered her more than a friend.
She was getting up in her years, and her death brought them tears.
But they always remembered her words
That with HOPE anything can be achieved
And you had to follow your dreams.
They are now nationwide and her spirit is by their side.
And in the office you will see a sign above their desk.

HOPE IS THE KEY TO SET OURSELVES FREE

(dwarfism- is a growth hormone deficiency)
Also known in the u.s. as the little people