1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never be as true as these
struck leaves letting go.

I, who chose two times
to **** myself, had said your nickname
the mewling mouths when you first came;
until a fever rattled
in your throat and I moved like a pantomine
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame,
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
like green witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go queer. You ask me where they go I say today believed
in itself, or else it fell.

Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self's self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,
why did I let you grow
in another place. You did not know my voice
when I came back to call. All the superlatives
of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe
will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
The time I did not love
myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
There was new snow after this.

2.

They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.

Part way back from Bedlam
I came to my mother's house in Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could. She had my portrait
done instead.

I lived like an angry guest,
like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.
I remember my mother did her best.
She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
Your smile is like your mother's, the artist said.
I didn't seem to care. I had my portrait
done instead.

There was a church where I grew up
with its white cupboards where they locked us up,
row by row, like puritans or shipmates
singing together. My father passed the plate.
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
I wasn't exactly forgiven. They had my portrait
done instead.

3.

All that summer sprinklers arched
over the seaside grass.
We talked of drought
while the salt-parched
field grew sweet again. To help time pass
I tried to mow the lawn
and in the morning I had my portrait done,
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit
and a postcard of Motif number one,
as if it were normal
to be a mother and be gone.

They hung my portrait in the chill
north light, matching
me to keep me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me
and said I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out
and still I couldn't answer.

4.

That winter she came
part way back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise of the X-ray,
the cells' arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
them say.

During the sea blizzards
she had here
own portrait painted.
A cave of mirror
placed on the south wall;
matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me; unacquainted
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
after all.

I wintered in Boston,
childless bride,
nothing sweet to spare
with witches at my side.
I missed your babyhood,
tried a second suicide,
tried the sealed hotel a second year.
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this
was good.

5.

I checked out for the last time
on the first of May;
graduate of the mental cases,
with my analysts's okay,
my complete book of rhymes,
my typewriter and my suitcases.

All that summer I learned life
back into my own
seven rooms, visited the swan boats,
the market, answered the phone,
served cocktails as a wife
should, made love among my petticoats

and August tan. And you came each
weekend. But I lie.
You seldom came. I just pretended
you, small piglet, butterfly
girl with jelly bean cheeks,
disobedient three, my splendid

stranger. And I had to learn
why I would rather
die than love, how your innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young intern
his symptons, his certain evidence.

That October day we went
to Gloucester the red hills
reminded me of the dry red fur fox
coat I played in as a child; stock still
like a bear or a tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.

We drove past the hatchery,
the hut that sells bait,
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall's
Hill, to the house that waits
still, on the top of the sea,
and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.

6.

In north light, my smile is held in place,
the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
of the smile, the young face,
the foxes' snare.

In south light, her smile is held in place,
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown
love, my first image. She eyes me from that face
that stony head of death
I had outgrown.

The artist caught us at the turning;
we smiled in our canvas home
before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry redfur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my own
Dorian Gray.

And this was the cave of the mirror,
that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother
and she cried.

7.

I could not get you back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you will stay for good. I will forget
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn't the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You can call me mother and I remember my mother again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

I remember we named you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my heavy breast.
I needed you. I didn't want a boy,
only a girl, a small milky mouse
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house
of herself. We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite sure
about being a girl, needed another
life, another image to remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
or soothe it. I made you to find me.

Here
Is a timely
Noun to consider
From the Merriam-Webster page.

"Trumpery."

Note (at bottom) the list of near-antonyms;
what is the opposite of trumpery?

[Popularity: Bottom 40% of words]

trumpery
noun trum·pery \ˈtrəm-p(ə-)rē\

Definition of trumpery

1
a : worthless nonsense b : trivial or useless articles : junk <a wagon loaded with household trumpery — Washington Irving>

2
archaic : ****** finery

Origin of trumpery

Middle English (Scots) trompery deceit, from Middle French, from tromper to deceive

First Known Use: 15th century

Examples of trumpery

<claims for weight-loss products that are based much more on Madison-Avenue trumpery than on bariatric science>

Related to trumpery

Synonyms
applesauce [slang], balderdash, baloney (also boloney), beans, bilge, blah (also blah-blah), blarney, blather, blatherskite, blither, bosh, bull [slang], bunk, bunkum (or *******), claptrap, codswallop [British], crapola [slang], crock, drivel, drool, fiddle, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks, flannel [British], flapdoodle, folderol (also falderal), folly, foolishness, fudge, garbage, guff, hogwash, hokeypokey, hokum, hoodoo, hooey, horsefeathers [slang], humbug, humbuggery, jazz, malarkey (also malarky), moonshine, muck, nerts [slang], nuts, piffle, poppycock, punk, rot, *******, senselessness, silliness, slush, stupidity, taradiddle (or tarradiddle), tommyrot, tosh, trash, nonsense, twaddle

Related Words
absurdity, asininity, fatuity, foolery, idiocy, imbecility, inaneness, inanity, insanity, kookiness, lunacy; absurdness, craziness, madness, senselessness, witlessness; hoity-toity, monkey business, monkeyshine(s), shenanigan(s), tomfoolery; gas, hot air, rigmarole (also rigamarole); double-talk, greek, hocus-pocus

Near Antonyms
levelheadedness, rationality, reasonability, reasonableness, sensibleness; common sense, horse sense, sense; discernment, judgment (or judgement), wisdom
By: Robinson Bolkum

Surrender, Submit & Commit
Just do it and be Legit.
Commit to Yah with your Heart, mind, body and soul.
Let Him take hold and be in Control.
Stop hiding, stop fighting, just Surrender.
Lift your hands and bask in the ambience of His great splendour.
Submit to him full custody
Put your faith and Truth in Thee.
Choose Wisely before you Serve Adonai.
Because you must serve him Spiritually and Truthfully.
Enter into Shalom, no more rigamarole.
The goal is to console,
Renew your mind and be made whole.
Surrender, Submit & Commit
Sit and think on it for just a tad bit.
I hope you can understand these words i spit.
Because its for your benefit.
Take heed to these words and embrace it.
Are you ready to Surrender, Submit & Commit?
Mentally without a doubt
Are you are ready to see what he's is all about.
Gracefully to him bow,
So do it, right here, right now!
Fully give yourself to him, Admit.
Surrender, Submit & Commit.

Society, the nectarous drenched **** of gregarious giving.
Or so we think..
One must be diligent to not consume to the point of overweening upon her intoxicating milk.
"You can be anything" she coos delicately stroking your forehead.
My bleary scruffed state prevents me from feeling her venomous *****.
I am rendered limp set agog by the hypnagogic melody of society.
Then there is you...
Your Wild renegade eyes pry me from my cemented prison.
Your Voltaic energy seeped in the poetry that coats my marrow and enamel, the substance of my soul.
Such beauty estranged from society? How can that be?
Was this matronly epicenter all farce and rigamarole?
I clamor in search for those eyes to appease my pain.
I search in vain..
until I face the mirror.
Those eyes belong to me, the remedy to society is the awakening of yourself, the claiming of your poetry.

No time to Shilly or to Shally.
No time to Dilly or to Dally.
If all you’ve got is Tittle-tattle
I’ll just up and go Skedaddle.

Got no time for Hugger-Mugger
Won’t put up with Argy-bargy
Rigamarole will have to go
Outside to eat yellow snow.
ljm

The gap between the neurons,
gave up on the natural rule,
that you have to maintain spaces,
as much as God originally mulled.

How gaps can trigger more
"How and When I'd die"
How people care and irk
at the very same time.

Nothing's ever in control,
heart, breath, all tripping
the light, it's a rigamarole
to try to understand why.

I have fashioned myself a cosseting nest of denial to protect me from my earnest yearnings.
I sit atop my stoop in cavalier crusted pessimism lobing over stones at the passing pedestrians enraptured with the bliss of romance.
"rigamarole dimwitted ****" I huff as I examine the fluidity of their movement.
They bob along as two flocculent clouds set agog.
Such dulcified fools; they see their lovers lips brimming with nectar and skin dashed with gold.
"Such farcical magic musings, who needs such things?" ; I question  rustling in my scathing bed of delusion.
One day I awoke to see a frenzied nest stationed next to me with a peculiarly pristine fellow bellowing.
The days following my eyes were deterred from ogling at the lovebirds beneath me as they grew curiously closer to the voltaic man vexing me.
He didn't pass his hours feeding from the disdain and self deprecating disarray, instead he perched giddily reading books and pacing incessantly.  
This mans marrow doesn't reek of lovers idealism, but his eyes lift a veil to show me utter perfection.
Owning the vessel he inhabits he doesn't allow room for preposterous inhibitions.
As he unrobes to show me the mind wrinkles fueling his insanity, I began to wonder if his lips are coated in the same sugar doused divinity.
As his hands gingerly caress mine, I decide to retire my stones, It seems about time I let myself learn to float.

There’s a lot of rigamarole involved
In living in the world today.
The details always nettle me
And slow me on my way.

I do my daily nine-to-five.
It’s such a long commute.
I’m tired when I reach my desk;
That traffic is a brute.

My British colleague peached* on me
For sleeping while at work.
I knew he was a tattle tale
And now he is a ****.

Anfractuousness describes my boss
His mind’s a tangled maze.
My pleas don’t make an inroad
Which has left me in a daze.

I wrote an elegiac tome
And put it on his chair
But he has not forgiven me
He’s such a grumpy bear.

I hope that I still have a job
My friend gave me a tip
He said to kiss the bosses ***
And pray for no pink slip.
                 ljm

11/28/2017

Grinning,
but who's to say I'm supposed to bear it?
dreaming of being loved and

tops of parking garages
where I will make my Olympic dive
perfect form, perfect form!

perhaps I'll make a show out of the whole
thing
the rigamarole of my rigor mortis

i wake up at four am and
think oh my ****,
life is a nightmare

you told me your self it wasn't fair
but you made those rules
and stuck to them


i will grow to hate your countenance
eventually and soon
when i rot and bloat in my grave.