Poetry Post #4
This poem came out of a very dark place. My early life was...wicked. A little child in a wicked, emotion-laden, disruptive household. Much, much later, I can look back at everyone reaching desperately for a little bit of stability, a tiny slice of direction. But the experience of that kind of childhood: it disables you in some ways ("seal the hatches! Dive! Dive!" as movies used to say), and it opens doors into magical alternative realities.
Sadness can be a refuge. A place to hide, a place to heal, a place to try delicately with things that will eventually require your entire soul be pushed cautiously to the center of a card table.
You say today, I say tomorrow
I envy you.
don’t get me wrong—
I am built for this existential dread,
I can wear it like a plastic suit.
the baby is so yours.
I feel, or make up, instincts
to provide, to accept, to cower before
the gods who own my life
and treat it so carelessly.
so fucking carelessly.
You were so kind on Monday.
I could hate, too, but
I can’t deny the logic of
rumors and half-wishes—
it is not the wisher’s fault
if their wish is just stupid.
Can I share in your dreams?
what finer feeling could rise to
displace my jealousy?
it’s raining bricks,
the barn is flying away,
the house rejects me,
the city screams in agony.
You look so composed in that silence.
that’s it: cities scream,
men howl,
but women are the engines of life.
Our child spilled out of you, like gold.
I peak into your room
through the inch-open door
you are on the bed,
squeezing Beverly to your chest
crying quietly
as if everything
still isn’t enough.
Your eyes look ready for anything.
stupid, blind,
I push open the door and
cross the room quietly,
to the bed, to you and baby
and I squat down and put my hand
first on your forehead—
hot, vicious, mean, lonely—
the baby is silence,
“I can’t do it,” you say,
“it’s perfect,” I say, but it’s clear
that perfect is insufficient.
I remember that day, much later,
when Beverly gets in the car to drive
to college, and you look like you have
wings, finally, and I ask you:
take me for a ride, honey.
I close the book
set it on the table
take a sip of tepid water:
How long have I been trying?
How much further to go?