Something To Thank My Mother For

Something To Thank My Mother For

I was born first.

I was the largest, hanging low and heavy like wet wash.

Her mother was two months dead  and her husband in the service,

   so she rode in her father's truck to the hospital.

Massachusetts in January was dark as the grave.

Her fingers had swollen, she couldn't wear her wedding ring.

My eyes were brown at once, oxydized by hospital air.

So the nurses judged her abandoned, me a half breed

   and brought her coffee and smokes.

As for me -

   I was so round, so satisfied, so wombful,

   I slept and slept.

I never woke for food.

I was already left-handed and dreamy.

My whole first year she had to tickle the bottoms of my feet

  to wake me, crying:

Look at this.  Look.

Like a Student

Like a Student

I chose him, the most nearly correct answer.

I erased my current choice:  None of the Above

and it's close contender:  All of the Above

gladly.

Worry

Worry

I knew it worried him,

no matter what he said.

I knew he thought I'd go back to her.

Even in the beginning,

when things were good,

he'd ask questions.

Later on,

when things got bad,

I'd cut off my fingernails

and come home late.

This is not gender

This is not gender

we are dealing with.

All of your concerns are irrelevent.

Who cares about what skin you chose

or the mechanics of insertion

or the posture of excretion?

I have chased that mercury across the linoleum

and I know.



Labor Day

Labor Day

The boys have grown so hard this summer -

   little apostles of violence screeching out of their driveways

   in their bad cars.

The mamas are pleading up and down the block -

   don't you leave.

   don't you take that car.

   why do you do this?  why?

And the answer is the same

   for the mamas and the gods and

   the jackoff cutting them off in traffic -

Fuck you, man, fuck you.

The boys have grown so hard this summer.

   They watch the mtv boys whip the clothes off some bitch

   until she's only lips and tits and high heels,

   stripped to cruel simplicity.

And I am afraid.

Love Is

Love Is



No ellipsis or object is necessary.

Love grows.

Beyond our imagining.

Without us.

Love smiles from our wounds,

urges the worm's turn,

licks the lids of the stillborn.

Safe from our ideas

love works to devour us.

For Faith, '73

from the before poems:

(no one cares if the phone rings when they're in the shower now)

For Faith, '73

Yes.

We'll get a house on the ocean.

We'll be so good at our jobs our bosses will say:

"What gems!"

and send us on vacation.

when we're away we'll send each other postcards.

When we get home we'll sit up until 5 a.m. and interrupt each other.

Whenever we want to see some people, there they'll be at the door.

We'll say: 

"Come on in, it's unlocked!"

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

We'll fight.

You'll say: 

"You drink too much, you're fat."

I'll say:

"You clean too much, you're skinny."

You'll get a beer and I'll get a broom

and we'll imitate each other until we laugh.

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

Lovers will come and go.

They will say:

"Too much." and smile.

Or they'll be mean.  They'll say:

"You're ignorant." 

We'll say:  "Ignorance is bliss!"

They'll say:  "Cows."

We'll say:  "Get out of our pasture."

And we'll sit quiet and sad until Adam come home

   with his prize-winning short story and we kiss him and celebrate.

Sometimes a man will stay with one of us.

The other one will fix breakfast and never walk in at the wrong time.

Sometimes men will stay with each of us.

Then we'll make them fix breakfast while we talk.

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

When one of us is depressed the other will say:

"Ain't it a bitch?" and make green and orange salad.

When both of us are depressed we'll sigh and sigh

   until Peter sighs, too, which will make us smile.

We'll have lots of stationery and write long letters

   which friends will save in jewelry boxes and desk drawers.

The cats will have just enough kittens in the basement.

We'll all be full and free.

And the phone will never ring when we're in the shower.

Yes.

Thomas Merton

      There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude.  Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.  Those who do not love, hate.  In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.  That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable.  It is hate disguised as love.

***   ***   ***

    A humility that freezes our being and frustrates all healthy activity is not humility at all, but a disguised form of pride.

***   ***   ***

     But as far as solidarity with other people goes, I am committed to nothing except a very simple and elemental kind of solidarity, which is perhaps without significance politically, but which I feel the only kind that works at all.  This is to pick out the people whom I recognize in a crowd and hail them and rejoice with them for a moment that we speak the same language.  Whether they be communists or whatever else they may be.  Whatever they may believe on the surface, whatever may be the formulas to which they are committed.  I am less and less worried by that people say or think they say, and more and more concerned with what they are able to be. 

Amen, Brother Merton, Amen.