My God, my God, my mothering God!
I cry to you from along this trackless waste,
Where humanity buried itself so long ago –
Scorched earth in place of garden sweet –
No water here to cool the parchĕd lips,
No sanctuary for the troubled, lonely soul.

My God, my God, my mothering God!
What did we do to make this barren land,
Where souls are turned to shadowy shades,
Eyes are empty and hearts grown cold?
We long for your mercy, better than life,
Gentle rain of grace, light in the darkness.

My God, my God, my mothering God!
I search this desert haunt, one broken man,
Where my brother is stripped of all dignity,
My sister is sold into slavery for pleasure;
Men **** your world for vanishing profit,
And crush your children for fleeting gain.

My God, my God, my mothering God!
Here in the wasteland we make our home
With tears and curses and all our fears –
We lost the war we began in ages past –
Now here we subsist, hostīle squatters,
Breath the air of the world we poisoned.

My God, my God, my mothering God!
This scorchĕd breeze carries the wailing,
Cries of the millions of the sick and poor,
Widows and orphans and lonely souls –
We blinded ourselves; we are deaf now –
Agony and angst, anxiety and final death.

My God, my God, my mothering God!
Is there some sanctuary in this desert land?
To lay down this self-borne cross, to rest –
Water to refresh, to cool the burning brow –
Some sweet promise of the garden again,
An oasis of hope amid our suffering shame?

1969 Hartford art school is magnet for exceedingly intelligent over-sensitive under-achievers alluring freaks congenital creeps and anyone who cannot cut it in straight world it is about loners dreamers stoners clowns cliques of posers competing to dress draw act most outrageous weird wonderful classrooms clash in diversity of needs some students get it right off while others require so much individual attention one girl constantly raises her hand calls for everything to be repeated explained creativity is treated as trouble and compliance to instruction rewarded most of faculty are of opinion kids are not capable of making original artwork teachers discourage students from dream of becoming well-known until they are older more experienced only practiced skilled artists are competent to create ‘real art’ defined by how much struggle or multiple meanings weave through the work Odysseus wants to make magic boxes without knowing or being informed of Joseph Cornell one teacher tells him you think you’re going to invent some new color the world has never seen? you’re just some rowdy brat from the midwest with a lot of crazy ideas and no evidence of authenticity another teacher warns you’re nothing more than a bricoleur! Odysseus questions what’s a bricoleur teacher informs a rogue handyman who haphazardly constructs from whatever is immediately available Odysseus questions what’s wrong with that? teacher answers it’s low-class folk junk  possessing no real intellectual value independently he reads Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is The Message” and “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” he memorizes introductory remark of Leonardo’s “i must do like one who comes last to the fair and can find no other way of providing for himself than by taking all the things already seen by others and not taken by reason of their lesser value” Odysseus dreams of becoming accomplished important artist like Robert Rauschenberg Jasper Johns Andy Warhol he dreams of being in eye of hurricane New York art scene he works for university newspaper and is nicknamed crashkiss the newspaper editor is leader in student movement and folk singer who croons “45 caliber man, you’re so much more than our 22, but there’s so many more of us than you” Odysseus grows mustache wears flower printed pants vintage 1940’s leather jacket g.i. surplus clothes he makes many friends his gift for hooking up with girls is uncanny he is long haired drug-crazed hippie enjoying popularity previously unknown to him rock bands play at art openings everyone flirts dances gets ****** lots of activism on campus New York Times dubs university of Hartford “Berkeley of the east coast” holding up ******* in peace sign is subversive in 1969 symbol of rebellion youth solidarity gesture against war hawks rednecks corporate America acknowledgment of potential beyond materialistic self-righteous values of status quo sign of what could be in universe filled with incredible possibilities he moves in with  painting student one year advanced named Todd Whitman Todd has curly blond hair sturdy build wire rimmed glasses impish smile gemini superb draftsman amazing artist Todd emulates Francisco de Goya and Albrecht Durer Todd’s talent overshadows Odysseus’s Todd’s dad is accomplished professor at distinguished college in Massachusetts to celebrate Odysseus’s arrival Todd cooks all day preparing spaghetti dinner when Odysseus arrives home tripping on acid without appetite Todd is disappointed Odysseus runs down to corner store buys large bottle of wine returns to house Todd is eating spaghetti alone they get drunk together then pierce each other’s ears with needles ice wine cork pierced ears are outlaw style of bad *** bikers like Hell’s Angels Todd says you are a real original Odys and funny too Odysseus asks funny, how? Todd answers you are one crazy ******* drop acid whenever you want smoke **** then go to class this is fun tonight Odys getting drunk and piercing our ears Odysseus says yup i’m having a good time too Todd and Odysseus become best friends Odysseus turns Todd on to Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and “Ariel” then they both read Ted Hughes “Crow” illustrated with Leonard Baskin prints Todd turns Odysseus on to German Expressionist painting art movement of garish colors emotionally violent imagery from 1905-1925 later infuriating Third ***** who deemed the work “degenerate” Odysseus dives into works of Max Beckmann Otto Dix Conrad Felixmulller Barthel Gilles George Grosz Erich Heckel Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Felix Nussbaum Karl *******Rottluff Carl Hofer August Macke Max Peckstein Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler Egon Shiele list goes on in 1969 most parents don’t have money to buy their children cars most kids living off campus either ride bikes or hitchhike to school then back home on weekends often without a penny in their pockets Odysseus and Todd randomly select a highway and hitch rides to Putney Vermont Brattleboro Boston Cape Cod New York City or D.C. in search of adventure there is always trouble to be found curious girls to assist in Georgetown Odysseus sleeps with skinny girl with webbed toes who believes he is Jesus he tries to dissuade her but she is convinced

Toby Mantis is visiting New York City artist at Hartford art school he looks like huskier handsomer version of Ringo Starr and women dig him he builds stretchers and stretches canvases for Warhol lives in huge loft in Soho on Broadway and Bleeker invites Odysseus to come down on weekends hang out Toby takes him to Max’s Kansas City Warhol’s Electric Circus they wander all night into morning there are printing companies longshoremen gays in Chelsea Italians in West Village hippies playing guitars protesting the war in Washington Square all kinds of hollering crazies passing out fliers pins in Union Square Toby is hard drinker Odysseus has trouble keeping up  he pukes his guts out number of times Odysseus is *** head not drinker he explores 42nd Street stumbles across strange exotic place named Peep Show World upstairs is large with many **** cubicles creepy dudes hanging around downstairs is astonishing there are many clusters of booths with live **** girls inside girls shout out hey boys come on now pick me come on boys there are hundreds of girls from all over the world in every conceivable size shape race he enters dark stall  puts fifty cents in coin box window screen lifts inside each cluster are 6 to 10 girls either parading or glued to a window for $1 he is allowed to caress kiss their ******* for $2 he is permitted to probe their ****** or *** for $10 girl reaches hand into darkened stall jerks him off tall slender British girl thrills him the most she says let me have another go at your dickey Odysseus spends all his money ******* 5 times departing he notices men from every walk of life passing through wall street stockbrokers executives rednecks mobsters frat boys tourists fat old bald guys smoking thick smelly cigars Toby Mantis has good-looking girlfriend named Lorraine with long brown hair Toby Lorraine and Odysseus sit around kitchen table Odysseus doodles with pencil on paper Toby spreads open Lorraine’s thighs exposing her ****** to Odysseus Lorraine blushes yet permits Toby to finger her Odysseus thinks she has the most beautiful ****** he has ever seen bulging pelvic bone brown distinctive bush symmetric lips Toby and Lorraine watch in amusement as Odysseus gazes intently Tony mischievously remarks you like looking at that ***** don’t you? Odysseus stares silently begins pencil drawing Lorraine’s ****** his eyes darting back and forth following day Lorraine seduces Odysseus while Toby is away walks out **** from shower she is few years older her body lean with high ******* she directs his hands mouth while she talks with someone on telephone it is strange yet quite exciting Odysseus is in awe of New York City every culture in the world intermingling democracy functioning in an uncontrollable managed breath millions of people in motion stories unraveling on every street 24 hour spectacle with no limits every conceivable variety of humanity ******* in same air Odysseus is bedazzled yet intimidated

Odysseus spends summer of 1970 at art colony in Cummington Massachusetts it is magical time extraordinary place many talented eccentric characters all kinds of happenings stage plays poetry readings community meals volleyball after dinner volleyball games are hilarious fun he lives alone in isolated studio amidst wild raspberries in woods shares toilet with field mouse no shower he reads Jerzy Kosinski’s “Painted Bird” then “Being There” then “Steps” attractive long haired girl named Pam visits community for weekend meets Odysseus they talk realize they were in first grade together at Harper amazing coincidence automatic ground for “we need to have *** because neither of us has seen each other since first grade” she inquires where do you sleep? Todd hitches up from Hartford to satisfy curiosity everyone sleeps around good-looking blue-eyed poet named Shannon Banks from South Boston tells Odysseus his ******* is not big enough for kind of ******* she wants but she will **** him off that’s fine with him 32 year old poet named Ellen Morrissey from Massachusetts reassures him ******* is fine Ellen is beginning to find her way out from suffocating marriage she has little daughter named Nina Ellen admires Odysseus’s free spirit sees both his possibilities and naïveté she realizes he has crippling family baggage he has no idea he is carrying thing about trauma is as it is occurring victim shrugs laughs to repel shock yet years later pain horror sink in turned-on with new ideas he returns to Hartford art school classes are fun yet confusing he strives to be best drawer most innovative competition sidetracks him Odysseus uses power drill to carve pumpkin on Halloween teachers warn him to stick to fundamentals too much creativity is suspect Todd and he are invited to holiday party Odysseus shows up with Ellen Morrissey driving in her father’s station wagon 2 exceptionally pretty girls flirt with him he is live wire they sneak upstairs he fingers both at same time while they laugh to each other one of the girls Laura invites him outside to do more he follows they walk through falling snow until they find hidden area near some trees Laura lies down lifts her skirt she spreads her legs dense ***** mound he is about to explore her there when Laura looks up sees figure with flashlight following their tracks in snow she warns it’s Bill my husband run for your life! Odysseus runs around long way back inside party grabs a beer pretending he has been there next to Ellen all night few minutes later he sees Laura and Bill return through front door Bill has dark mustache angry eyes Odysseus tells Ellen it is late maybe they should leave soon suddenly Bill walks up to him with beer in hand cracks bottle over his head glass and beer splatter Odysseus jumps up runs out to station wagon Ellen hurriedly follows snow coming down hard car is wedged among many guest vehicles he starts engine locks doors maneuvers vehicle back and forth trying to inch way out of spot Bill appears from party walks to his van disappears from out of darkness swirling snow Bill comes at them wielding large crowbar smashes car’s headlights taillights side mirrors windshield covered in broken glass Ellen ducks on floor beneath glove compartment sobs cries he’s going to **** us! we’re going to die! Odysseus steers station wagon free floors gas pedal drives on back country roads through furious snowstorm in dark of night no lights Odysseus contorts crouches forward in order to see through hole in shattered windshield Ellen sees headlights behind them coming up fast it is Bill in van Bill banging their bumper follows them all the way back to Hartford to Odysseus’s place they run inside call police Bill sits parked van outside across street as police arrive half hour later Bill pulls away next day Odysseus and Ellen drive to Boston to explain to Ellen’s dad what has happened to his station wagon Odysseus stays with Ellen in Brookline for several nights another holiday party she wants to take him along to meet her friends her social circles are older he thinks to challenge their values be outrageous paints face Ellen is horrified cries you can’t possibly do this to me these are my close friends what will they think? he defiantly answers my face is a mask who cares what i look like? man woman creature what does it matter? if your friends really want to know me they’ll need to look beyond the make-up tonight i am your sluttish girlfriend! sometimes Odysseus can be a thoughtless fool

Laura Rousseau Shane files for divorce from Bill she is exceptionally lovely models at art school she is of French descent her figure possessing exotic traits she stands like ballerina with thick pointed ******* copious ***** hair Odysseus is infatuated she frequently dances pursues him Laura says i had the opportunity to meet Bob Dylan once amazed Odysseus questions what did you do? she replies what could i possibly have in common with Bob Dylan? Laura teases Odysseus about being a preppy then lustfully gropes him grabs holds his ***** they devote many hours to ****** intimacy during ******* she routinely reaches her hand from under her buns grasps his testicles squeezing as he pumps he likes that Laura is quite eccentric fetishes over Odysseus she even thrills to pick zits on his back he is not sure if it is truly a desire of hers proof of earthiness or simply expression of mothering Laura has two daughters by Bill Odysseus is in over his head Laura tells Odysseus myth of Medea smitten with love for Jason Jason needs Medea’s help to find Golden Fleece Medea agrees with promise of marriage murders her brother arranges ****** of king who has deprived Jason his inheritance couple is forced into exile Medea bears Jason 2 sons then Jason falls in love with King Creon’s daughter deserts Medea is furious she makes shawl for King Creon’s daughter to wear at her wedding to Jason  shawl turns to flames killing bride Medea murders her own sons by Jason Odysseus goes along with story for a while but Laura wants husband Odysseus is merely scruffy boy with roving eyes Laura becomes galled by Odysseus leaves him for one of his roommates whom she marries then several years later divorces there is scene when Laura tells Odysseus she is dropping him for his roommate he is standing in living room of her house space is painted deep renaissance burgundy there are framed photographs on walls in one photo he is hugging Laura and her daughters under big oak tree in room Laura’s friend Bettina other girl he fingered first night he met Laura at party is watching with arms crossed he drops to floor curls body sobs i miss you so much Laura turns to Bettina remarks look at him men are such big babies he’s pitiful Bettina nods

following summer he works installing displays at G. Fox Department Store besides one woman gay men staff display department for as long as he can remember homosexuals have always been attracted to him this misconception is probably how he got job his tenor voice suggesting not entirely mature man instead more like tentative young boy this ambiguous manifestation sometimes also evidences gestures thoroughly misleading after sidestepping several ****** advances one of his co-workers bewilderingly remarks you really are straight manager staff are fussy chirpy catty group consequently certain he is not gay they discriminate against him stick him with break down clean up slop jobs at outdoor weekend rock concert in Constitution Plaza he meets 2 younger blond girls who consent to go back to his place mess around both girls are quite dazzling yet one is somewhat physically undeveloped they undress and model for Odysseus radio plays Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” both girls move to rhythm sing along he thinks to orchestrate direct decides instead to let them lead lies on bed while curvaceous girl rides his ******* slender girl sits on his face they switch all 3 alternate giggle laughter each girl reaches ****** on his stiffness later both assist with hands mouths his ****** is so intense it leaves him paralyzed for a moment

in fall he is cast as Claudius in production of Hamlet Odysseus rehearses diligently on nights o

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

Mothering In Real Time

I don’t know how you do it,
Mothering in real time

Between Budget meetings and
Committee meetings and
Leadership meetings and
Board meetings and
Volunteer meetings and
Volunteer meetings and
Volunteer meetings…
You manage to
Listen and
Counsel and
Organize and
Discuss and
Attend and
Advise and
Be a friend to so many and
Most of all love…

Mothering in real time
Is what you do
And we would be lost without you

the mothering love
of letting go

silently keeping
a corner

warm the nest
ready to welcome

anytime me
the wounded bird

a small body
still crossing oceans

Your children are a precious gift so innocent and pure.
At their birth you have the hope of love, lasting evermore.

You spend your waking days attending to their needs,
Waiting for the next smile and sound of utter glee,

And when you sleep you dream of them and wait until the dawn,
Rising before break of day to greet them in the morn,

Your babies grow and soon become your little girls and boys.
You exchange all their play things for larger, bigger toys.

You’ve learned about mothering and matured along the way,
But your relationship with their daddy isn’t turning out ok.

There are ups and downs and you expect that to be true.
But underlying unhappiness begins to escape through.

Daddy doesn’t seem to be all he is meant to be,
Late nights in the lounge, is he watching the TV?

Your children keep you happy though, just look into their face,
They make you smile, they make you laugh, and they fill you with grace.

But underlying unhappiness cannot be washed away,
It’s growing like a tumour, just waiting for its day.

You are not sure what it is, but this one thing you know,
No matter what happens now, you enjoy watching your children grow.

The pre-teen years are nearly over and the high school years draw near.
Then one child beckons you and whispers in your ear.

“Daddy’s been molesting me it started when I was four
All those times you were asleep, he came through my bedroom door
He put his hands all over me I couldn’t make him stop
I wanted to die many times, to fall down and drop!

He hurt me with his ***** mummy, I am so ashamed
I was too scared to tell before because I was to blame
Once, you were in the room mummy, I could see you sleeping
He molested me then and there mummy, I could hear your breathing

My heart screamed out to you mummy, but I did not exist,
My soul began to suffocate and death seemed freedoms bliss.”

The words your child is speaking echo through an empty void,
And darkness falls around you, encumbering you like a shroud.

Someone just stuck a knife into the heart of what was sacred.
Your precious children have been filled with someone else’s hatred.

You need some help, you need to grieve but who can be trusted.
The fear the shame the hurt the blame your heart is torn and busted.

You collect your shattered children and hold them very tight,
You hold them ever so-close, you hold them with all your might.

Flashes of the years gone by ignite before your eyes,
And you see so clearly, all the torment in his lies.

Time has passed you by and your children have grown
But it feels only yesterday you were crushed against the stones

MOTHERING INSTINCT

Tears...tears well but don't fall.

Bottom lip. . .trembles.

Top lip. . . quivers

& just before she can begin
to howl...

...I howl!

I open my mouth
& - bawl!

Stunned
she stares at my open mouth

with nothing but
sobs coming out.

'I'm...cryin'...'cos...you were..
...gonna...cry! '

I manage to blurt out
(trying not to laugh behind my crocodile tears) .

She climbs up on my lap
(a sturdy little foot on each patella)

wipes my fake tears
away with her hair.

'Ah...Dónall Dónal...not cry! '
'Big boy not cry! Sillly...Dónall cry! '

'Shhhhhhhh! 'she sushes me
kissing a me(guilty)

of unleashing my four year olds
mothering instinct.

I was conceived on acid and whippets, the drugs a kaleidoscope of umbilical dreams.
I was conceived on bad luck and lust, from darkness and sexually exploitive childhood trauma.
I was conceived on teenage dreams and difficult childhoods, to black sheep children of 17.

I was raised on addiction and narcissism, a love bomb here and authoritarian abuse there.
I was raised on the chess long game, to lose a piece here means to win at the end.
I was raised on 2000s tv, Lorelei Gilmore my wish for a mother, Rory my idol.

I taught myself strength in building up a fantasy on the outside while my castle crumbled within.
I picked myself up by the tendrils of a lost childhood, by the whispers of good memories, by the hiding places I found in pages upon pages of someone else’s imagination.

And I let it all go at 28. To find peace. To start over. To build myself a new castle with no more haunted corners or echoes of pill bottles or smells of ***** and orange juice permeating the breaths of those who walk these sacred halls.
Rib cage cut open, heart destroyed and renewed, ancient umbilical nooses cut with teeth.

I will no longer fall victim to my mother’s circumstances or my father’s mistakes, I will never have the soul I’ve created look at me and ask himself if he is loved or safe.

I am cycle breaker,
I am generational karma’s worst ******* fear,
I am no longer frightened maiden,
I am fearsome mother.
I am new.

He's playing the harmonica,
Drums and cymbals too,
An accordion between his hands,
Bells upon each shoe.

He entertains the passers-by,
Coins land in his cap,
They gasp to see so many things,
Done by just one chap.

A mother watches, unimpressed,
I think with good cause.
For though she's doing more than him,
She gets no applause.

Thousands of cards are opened
in hundreds of rooms

And the wine is uncorked
a little earlier than usual

And everybody talks to one another
for once

And smiles captured through words
cover and hide the awkward ****
of sadness
That rises, like a cold,
on the flesh.

Snowy owl with freedom singing in her eyes
She has shaken off a few backwards fitting feathers
Who had worn out their welcome
Now lighter and more free
She is everything she is meant to be
A window to shine out her undying light
The universe speaks through her fingertips
Mothering owl with a smile most comforting
Has hidden the truth beneath her quaking quills
Finding a new sun every day
She is sweeping the dust of her past away
Drained of her milk of misery… she is the purest of cacao
Radiating her rays to all who come across her
Her message is love
Her passion is life
Her heart was never as faint to be feared
Those off-beats of her rhythm
Were lessons to be learned
Blessings as blossoms to ****** her heart from the dark
Exquisite owl with eyes that kiss the daylight
A heart as open as galaxies
A voice as soothing as the breeze
Your hands will heal the world’s disease

we walk with faces to the sky
the goddesses on earth
our words from a breathless heartsigh
we appear with old grecian beauty
and not such modern masks
it comes in hand with our ancient virtues
true to our everlasting tasks

hera; dark curls and flaming passion
striking down all who cross her
thin and wary is she

artemis; earthy flesh and midnight coils
gentle to the wild and bow-weilding
athletic and kind is she

demeter; flaxen tresses and tenderness
protecting her wards
mothering and calm is she

athena; thick legs and honey hair
raising blood-soaked war flags
wise and fearless am i

I once left my heart in the pocket of a saint
blinded by sunset light, drunk from midnight madness,
and falling into the monotony of broken dandelion stems and lost eyelash wishes-
I didn’t think I would need it much longer
The burden of rebirthing beats continuously
stamping out the keys
Of my empty piano chest –
As I held onto the breaths of broken warriors
Sponging the blood off their slashed

double
layered
skin

And praying
they could keep their fight for just

One
More
night

He never noticed the extra beat
added to the twitches of his time-ticking body
deaf from the ringing calls to heroism
only on the odd hours he didn’t have muffled
by the recipes of the women he’d saved
buying out bravery like it could shield his soft tongued love
leaving nothing but the clothes on his back
woven from stardusted bomb shelters
And
left over hopes
selling the silver lining of every breath he took
just to buy the next broken-bar girl a drink

He was a saint after all --

born from the innocent hopes I wish I still had,
tucked in the corners of sun-freckled smiles
and
Mothering seatbealt arms
and
Careless Carnival Food
the kind I know some of my soldiers withered against
writhing their souls from the bodies they had been straight jacketed too
prisoners of war stuck in the memory
of just how many calories a sugared funnel cake could have
did have
will have
add up to the self worth shot out of their chest
from last nights uncontrolled binge
of two apples and a cheerio promise ring

No,
he had never been in the middle of the war
never known the taste of blood
rusting in the rain of covered up skin
drenched in the salt water stings of failure
peeling away the scabs of
addictive adrenaline disadvantages
and mapping the battle plan of tomorrows attack
against an enemy so close
it was breathing the same air your lungs had not finished purifying

No,
his hands had never held the dyeing breaths of a comrade in arms
as they shook from the fears riding up their spine
praying the poison won’t take
praying the stolen bottles didn’t break
and that violent vomiting viguals
might burn just enough of the alcohol mistake
so their blood won’t have to curdle

No,
he had never heard the desperation
of sobbing secretes suddenly swindled
from between the lips of a girl who never wanted to remember
the night that never happened
one year, five months, fourteen days --
and three hours ago
her father had asked her why she never wore skirts anymore
and why she never brought boys over anymore
and why she never left her room anymore
and why her silent cheekbone cry for help never smiled anymore

No.

A saint is never found on the battlefield
never scared by the everlasting burns
of war paint psychiatric wards
and gun powder therapy sessions
sprinkled with the hope against hope moments that maybe
we’ll have a break through --

Like the ****** morning sun rebirthing the beats
of duck taped dreams
and
medicated eyes
and
catatonic lips --

I left my heart in the pocket of a saint
confessing the sins of the hopeless hospital it fueled
between our silent lipped kisses
squeezing out the stories of unnamed soldiers
between our woven fingers
and betraying my fear
in the tremble of my body against his –
I left my heart with him on the one-night-stand whim
that I would grow deaf to the sound
of TAPS played on my piano rib keys
and
blind to the specks of blown dandelion wishes

But I still hear the echoes of them
rattling against the stitching
of his bomb shelter pockets

and I wonder if he’s still searching for me
between the crumpled recites of midnight mass mixers
and
open cathedral whispers

because I still think of him sometimes
absent mindedly pick pocketing saints for smiles
but I’ve only found lint and regret
tucked in the corners of their heroic attempt
to protect the bruised hearts of the saviors
who haven’t quite yet found salvation

http://hellopoetry.com/search/poems/?q=Betterdays



as is my wanton wont,
when stumbling
upon a new voice,
the passed baton
is herein handed off

am old man.
my poetic voice is just
memories that are
repetitive lies and lines.

speak in simple sentences declarative.
this is nature's way.

darkness approaching is indeed my
au courant poem, mon actuellement.

I have seen better days.

I have read betterdays.

now I am upset, distraught.

here come another young
hot bright votive voice,
and I am being asked to believe that there are
still words that raise hopes of
betterdays.

her bed chip crumbs, delighting,
leave crumbs of pleasure in my soul.

l like her big word poems,
that leave me, fill me by:
siphoning all in a parched gluttony
leaving behind a viscous residue
and few glassine portals
into a reflective world

better yet I love her
mothering little god poems,
letting me remember little boys
who once loved a father

little god love
radiant is thy smile,
smallboy love, exudes from you,
like a flower god's nectar,
bestowed, with negligent love,
upon a mother's world.
i will drink my fill,
everyday, whilst i can,
for far to soon will you
grow up.

don't speak eastern Australian,
tackers and doona's, no clue,
blue cats are a foreign breed,
but the cat of this starfish mother,
shares my literary tastes:

him, nestled,
on the second, to
uppermost stay,
of the third
bookshelf,
in the study.
he has filed
himself,
between,
ogden nash
and proust
and it is there,
he plans to stay.

let me not go on and in deeper, lest
I delay you from her pleasuring
thy tasted untested senses.

so here I am all grumpified
(at my age, you can make up your own words)
unsure if un or satisfied,
knowing that a woman,
word whips me into a
soothing frenzy of creamy
morning coffee verbosity,
a captive taker of life's
ungrandest moments,
poems of them,
make to glory come.

somewhere in the world,
a woman writes of plain goodness
of simple strife and simple lives,
makes methinks that there could be
betterdays still ahead,
better poets surely, than me,
and the day starts well

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.

If Tuesdays are bad news days 
Fridays are always sideways 
Struggling 
Hustling 
Fumbling 
Tumbling 
Trembling stuttering 
Impolite utterances 
Brotherless 
Misguided mothering 
Distant cousins 
Conditioned lovers 
Struck by thunder 
No structure to govern...

Monday is gonna come...

No matter what goes on in your life Monday is going to come 
Give me one time that Monday have not approached? 
Hold your head 
You'll be alright 
If not 
Monday is still on it's way 
If you stay stuck in muck 
The world isn't 
It will move onto a new week

am i too much for you?
is it that fact i have a loose *****, or two, or three
did i really need to see you through for every day you
touched me, looked me in the eye, said the fire will never die
but it did

and that hoodie fills a space between two legs,
square pegs into round holes, binge eating until you
hurt your throat
but you still devote yourself to being
skinny

and that word has plagued me for so long, like a song, like a call, and now i need to know, before i fall, am i skinny enough to be loved? is my collarbone every going to be a wishing well, will i burn in hell for the simple sin of being fat?

but in reality, the only real causality was myself
i force fed myself discipline, hoped someone
would listen, but they never did

even the shrinks said i was crazy
and that i was lazy for not going out, excising until
my skin split and a beautiful butterfly emerged
then i'd surge into battle like a goddess

but when your thighs are thick and you aren't modest,
and when you wear lipstick too thick like a woman
with double Ds and an ache between her knees
you know that if you were skinny, you'd never have
these problems, and if you did
you'd know how to solve them
to be skinny
is to be graceful

even in suicidal rages
that flip through pages and pages of stories before they rip my own
from existence
need to be kept under control and kept at a distance like
a tiger that has the taste for human flesh

but now i know i'm the best, because i have a good ****,
long legs and a pretty face
but i'm too hard to replace in this overpriced world
where girls are told to starve themselves

to a neutral, non-pear shape
until their ******* are the tip of an hourglass
their waists are too thin to last
and their eyes are longing for even the tiniest indulgence
avoiding food and any substance
that would jeopardize
skinny

but then i realized
if skinny was so important
then why did all those who were it
probably also were just a little bit away from going insane
and we were in the same boat, staying afloat together
on the ocean of
skinny

so i wrote this poem
for every single girl or woman
who needed a book or a booking
to make them feel beautiful, and by beautiful i mean
skinny

but beautiful can be skinny,
but it can also be thighs like tree trunks,
arms like rivers
and a body that delivers nothing but happiness to that of it's owner

and my body is not some loaner car you
can trash and get away with
there will be fines,
for i am fine,

but in those times, where
nothing was ever promised to me
i started to see

beautiful could mean
staying up to take care of your kids,
single-mothering and being glad your husband
got rid of himself before you could, because
you can do a much better job without the chain-smoke
and you stay woke
forever
because skinny is a construct

or it could mean
studying in waters of student loans,
feeling alone as the only ******* campus
but working hard to become a lawyer or a doctor,
she will always be her mother's daughter

i'd say words stronger than this,
but there are children here,
but ***** skinny!
i am beautiful,
you are beautiful
and by beautiful
i mean anything you want it to mean.

I can see it through my third eye, reflections from the sunny window.
Inner mothering, is guiding me through. Nature pushes and pulls, this is true. I console the wounds, all knowing keep warm in my arms. I'll rock you back and forth, until you give it a rest. Broken branches, and a fumbling cliff rock, I shall allow you to fall. Displacement wasn't ever at all, which ever you reach, there you shall remain until displaced again.

An Irish couple buy some fertilised duck eggs and they hatch.
But then they’re missing!
The cat is licking her lips.
Oh No!
They follow the cat to her snug in the barn.
She too has given birth.
Snuggled beneath the cat’s protective paws
Are suckling kittens and DUCKLINGS!

Had those dear ducklings hatched an hour earlier
Or later
They would have been cat food.
But around the birthing time Missus Cat was only a Mother,
Mothering anything that moved.

Mother Nature breeds such Motherly instincts.
A thing of Wonder.
A story that happens to be True.

Since then those ducks grew up
But still followed their “Mother”
Everywhere she went (within reason).
An unshakeable bond,
Lasting for ever.

Paul Butters

i get the monkey from the argument, but she gets the mantis and the black widow spider; darwinism ought to be as fashionable these days, at a leopard print dress, or a leotard, or pikachu pyjamas; i'm tired of **** similis arguments and the pseudo-darwinistic retardation of history, true or not, there has always been a huge geological overlooking of history in terms of darwinism (the saharan mountain range)... i can't allow the monkey and the mantis in the same melting ***, only yesterday i ate a spider, and realised: these legs are inedible... they have the texture of ***** (******) hair... i have absolutely no idea what fluids i ingested last night, but i did, and i feel like i was close to stating: pol *** was this close | |, to staging an authentic bingo game, and a legit charity raffle... then again, that just might be the spider fluids talking, and the fact that i spat out the spider's legs.*

oh, right, the new normal
is the "new" television?
          i've been wondering
lately, why the internet isn't
all: let's bypass the powers
of publishing at bay,
     and more:
   claustrophobia centrist -
boa mothering,
   i.e. constipated, non-dialectical,
necessarily rude and
implosive comments section
akin to a film's end credits.

royals mistake the tears cried over animals, esp. those wild and not petted, as if they were man’s added 1 to a million ‘ stones in minature form of the sandy: see that singleton quotation mark? it’s different pause from comma semi-colon or hyphen, it’s the ironic pause - almost compounding the two words.*

i skullhead i,
i the skullhead, i,
no more a body than a maxim,
i the tomb in stone
but in body a bone,
i skullhead i,
i the skullhead,
no more a body than a maxim -
why will not death wilt
before engaging in the lives or mortals?
why will death meddle in mortal amorousness
when it will not meddle in a death of a god?
**** you death!
meddle elsewhere! who are prone
to breathe the same air as you;
interesting lives make less
of a library than libraries readily mothering
the lives hardly lived but nonetheless written...
eager ***** in section 1,
less eager ***** in section 1.5
mature ***** in sectiont 2 of being crazed
by crosswords and those dumb books
written by young men who "diverged from living"
given horse was replaced by motorcycle...
and feet were replaced by horse later replaced by
ferrari... vroom vroom...
and affordable life in london by saudi arabia investments;
let's wave to our mothers...
we'll be the ones on the premier red carpet
for sure...
it doesn't matter... i prefer opera to cinematic raqqa...
and i prefer theatre to conversation.

I waved you goodbye, as if
I would see you on Sunday..

Then my Father phoned
at four in the morning...

..and my Father never phones....

Orion,
I kind of miss your sandy hair,
and the way your eyes are bluer than mine.
I miss the way you'd watch me fall asleep,
and I'm pretty sure I can hear the absence
of your chuckle every time the night sky is clear.

Orion,
I miss the way you used to tell stories:
your face was the most expressive form of art,
I swear you lit up the entire room,
you were my forever young Peter Pan,
discussing the battles of young warriors
and the chaos of young daughters,
and how their hearts were full of mothering love.

Orion,
I saw you were in town tonight,
I noticed you sitting among the rest of the sky tonight.
Would you mind peeking in my room this evening,
would you mind taking me to fly with the rest
of the lost boys?

Orion,
I miss your tanned arms snaking around mine,
I feel the need to smell the sun on your neck again.

Orion,
Would you visit me, maybe?

Sincerely,
A Very Lovesick Girl

When my grandmother dies,
I hope they fill her casket with flowers.
So that the last time we see her,
she is nestled in amongst
the delicate feathered petals of mountain bluet
haloed by the bright yellow of birdsfoot
the length
of her soft
decaying body
is caressed by the long stalks of bottle brush
and bog candle
so that we can imagine her,
splayed out in a warm field
on the outskirts of St Johns
laughing in the sunlight
the weight
of such a long life,
of mothering so many children,
melting away
into the warm red soil.

I hope the service
is held in a small white church
with all the windows thrown open;
the clear air and the sunlight
tumbling down onto our heads,
onto her lightly clasped hands,
onto her soft  lips...

I hope they read poems for her
play light happy songs for her
I hope
everyone remembers to tell her
they love her.
I will ask,
that they bury her somewhere
with a good view of the stars,
lay her to rest where the wind
blows the smell of the ocean over her,
and she can admire the sunrise
under the arms of a gentle Alder.

I hope we remember
that she has loved
so deeply
that she has laughed
and lost
and been so unbearably human
all of her life
even when she has been quiet
even as she has cared for us.

I hope we remember
what a resilient woman she is
but also how tender.
How new she once was,
to love
and to it’s touch.

And when I
am someone’s grandmother
I hope they remember
that even I,
was once somebody’s lover.

Hips don't help
when I'm hightailing home
hurrying...

Times like these, I'd rather be asexual.

I see shadows slink-scurrying
slithering slyly
sneering...

I hate your ability to intimidate.

I want to turn toward and
take on your trash
toughly...

But there's five of you and one of me. And my hands are small.

No matter the mothering moralists
who match me to men
meaningfully...

I am a woman, and I am still afraid.

Self-defense can only go so far...
and my hips don't help.

Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
  wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
   a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
  to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
   feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
  The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
  collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
  itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
      available for the world to break once again.

Weekend walls come down
containing our free will
navigating our minds and meeting
us on the way home
dragging our thoughts and vision
mothering our bodies and liberating our minds
weekend walls are boundless
despite their presence and their substance
weekends would be dull without their fall
freedom is a state of mind and letting
us move and think without measure
is just too much as the goodness they hold is exposed
not walls but views of the world
as we want it and how we make it
peaceful and requiring no support.

Jean, death comes close to us all,
flapping its awful wings at us
and the gluey wings crawl up our nose.
Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs,
whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle,
mine pushed into gnawing a stilbestrol cancer
I passed on like hemophilia,
or yours in the seventh grade, with her spleen
smacked in by the balance beam.
And we, mothers, crumpled, and flyspotted
with bringing them this far
can do nothing now but pray.

Let us put your three children
and my two children,
ages ranging from eleven to twenty-one,
and send them in a large air net up to God,
with many stamps, real air mail,
and huge signs attached:
SPECIAL HANDLING.
DO NOT STAPLE, FOLD OR MUTILATE!
And perhaps He will notice
and pass a psalm over them
for keeping safe for a whole,
for a whole ******* life-span.

And not even a muddled angel will
peek down at us in our foxhole.
And He will not have time
to send down an eyedropper of prayer for us,
the mothering thing of us,
as we drip into the soup
and drown
in the worry festering inside us,
lest our children
go so fast
they go.

When you woke up and told me
How sick you really were
I couldn't believe it .
It was an untold mystery
That still had a story to tell
And as soon as you asked
I had to give you a cure
So I began connecting all around
Having only better in mind .
I wanted us all the time
Rhythm had cost too much
Next to the unimportant
And everyone around
Were sick in the mind
Madness had struck one too many times
Calling her name, they all wrote
Taking her fame
Killing her tame
She had a message in a bottle
Like a sad little story
Landing on a sunny beach
But this is all his story
No I lied, its actually mine
Kind, I let lead the blind
**** it, I tried

So now I'm waiting here
Letting brain take its course
Matter is always there
And it takes mothering motion
To send it on its way .

the "mystery" of the transaction,
that's quiet legal in
Amsterdam...
      you can only actually subject
           a woman to "your" object...
if you're never made such
a transation...
            i guess you're left in the dark
with all the fungus-historians
that speak of the second "big-bang"
of an ape on hallucinogenics...
objectifying women...
            funny...
                           not even funny,
just odd...
              maybe the whole
    objectivity "vs." subjectivity is not
being allowed duality,
     that eventually becomes blurry...
and is instead
  this jargon quasi-intellectualism of
people afraid of Alzheimer's
disintegration of words from
words and words from ideas and
ideas from clarifying idea-neutral
narratives...
              perhaps it's an american
thing,
       since a stripper can't be made
        subject to the "objectifying" posit...  
make that's why there's really
only an objectification-of-object
and no, absolutely no
     subjectification-of-object-***-subject?
is objectification a reference
to genital "intrusion"?
      what if there is no genital "intrusion"?
******* crossword puzzles
that sometimes aim of exposing
working within the confines of
   the thesaurus...
                 a-subject made inconvenient
        by the-object?
     sure, given i was only the fifth
in line...
                        i actually don't know
what objectivism implies
with the confines
   of a woman who will not desire
to make me into a subjective
enterpire of, mothering,
wife...
                  and... what am i again?
object of an hour
    within the absolute lack of
subject on her behalf...
                 for some strange reason
she's more of a subject,
a canvas... than i might allow myself
to not be a stroke of a brush
and some, paint...
          but then public conversation
doesn't attach itself to
the intellectual murk of dualism:
                    it needs dichotomy...        
nice backdrop, a week ago:
   haven't seen a lightning storm like that
acting out parliament over
           london in a long time...
in the back of my mind:
      the subjectivism of women seems
inherently wrong...
   subjectifying could be deemed
more harroring for the idle minor-head
when turning blisters into
       golden flakes on the topic of
   ego                  body
           \           /           \
              mind                id
                                     cosine serpent...
given the sine serpent answer:
                id              mind
             /      \         /      
    body          "ego"
      i can only fathom a threshold of the point
of objectification...
        after the threshold
there's a breach of objects -
      unlike a guarantee of one
man, a hammer and a sack of nails...
       i'm just curious that
there is an actual legal non-debate taking
place...
                the sort of shrinking
**** sensation in english law:
    it's illegal to own brothels...
   but it's not illegal to procure
the act...
                       so what's the difference
between objectification
                    and necrophilia?
the former word isn't as fancy...
  it's not exactly equivalent to mana from
heaven for the Hibrealites...
    i can only undertand
authentic objectification
             as confined to necrophilia...
of what is necessary to express
the crude correlation of "fact" to act...
          since then the death-fore of
eating beef...
           but without actually *******
a cow...
                             so a dead end...
it's just a "problem" with too many
close-proximity words...
         namely the ob-        sub-
              prefix claustrophobia of attaching
a thought to explaining or:
   guaranteeing a decided congregation
on...
             2 years without
  having touched a human body in the way
that i'd like to be touched,
kissed, looked intently into the eyes...
   finding sparrows chirping
on gently toying with lips using
the bare minimum of tongue and teeth?
finding the gentle baron cartilege of
the nose also being gentle leeched...
                 and a giggle?
              just my luck to have synchronised
the two events...
   and written this a week later;
could never take to metaphorical *** antics
   in the known to me
               expressions of being *** starved;
i'm a butcher...
           not an Argentinian beef chef
                      or food critique combined.

the youngest brother loves his ladder.  the oldest is barefooted and sentimental.  the middle is marketed to your children and dies to put a stop to the glorification of suicide.  their father knows **** well what the world thinks of them so why would he stoop to reading.  the family bible isn’t a book because it knows nothing about god.  mothering is not the billboard that got away.

father shined his shoes
we ironed handkerchiefs
by the dozen shirt collars
underwear so white and loose
child noise song not allowed
we did not know he missed being
artist bad boy free
sole beloved of his woman
now mothering too many
his own left too soon
the boy to hurt forever
to pass that truth along
as best he could