Hauswerk
The baby is helping
to break the wedding presents. Ten years of marriage,
like one of those ancient cities built on
its own ruins, but it kept the same
name, and its name was
the same as its founder: Housework.
Stamping and wheeling,
tramping and twisting, amidst
the toys amidst the kitchen utensils, like a horse in a cage...
Horses don’t go in cages? Horses SHOULDN’T go in cages.
Arrayed for the bridal, set up for the stirrups
and the saddle block--out comes the baby in a rush
of housework. What is it? It’s a housework!
If they would just eat.
If only they would just play.
If they would just sleep.
What day of the week is it? What day of the day is it?
What split of the second? What number of
the number and number and number...is it?
What’s the ratio of making love to getting splashed by the faucet?
The same as the ratio of house to work is the same
as work to house: the same. As housework.
Propped up like a little stone god, the baby stares at
savage rituals performed
compulsively, convulsively, doesn’t matter,
the money won’t come down. Instead, company
is company. COMPANY company’s coming. That doesn’t mean
working for the company, it doesn’t even mean
company, it means: they play house
and you play work. That’s not so hard a game
to learn, is it, Workhouse? Wrong again--
the house comes first in Housework.
“I’ve learned how to get along on less sleep--
it’s called stupidity.”
WHO SAYS you aren’t equal?
That a homemaker is worth $40,000 a year
when that’s more than the paycheck comes to, goes
to show YOU DO have skills in mathematics!
Catfood in the toaster equals kittypee in the crib;
falling full length in a mud puddle equals biting through a nipple;
equals, equal, equals--it just doesn’t add up,
that’s all. Rubber sheet geometry,
yes; arithmetic, no. Housework forever
doesn’t quite equal Housework Forever.
The trading of disorder for chaos, like a lost missionary.
The setting up little goals, like a soldier shooting his foot.
The battering against the same dirty shores.
The donkey engine of repetition.
But--routine tasks free the mind for creative speculation, to wit:
I think, therefore I trip; I trip, therefore I forget;
I forget, therefore I am. Am what? Am able to do it
all over again--do what?--housework
is what--is what?--is housework!
“My mother said,
‘They’re never really weaned until you’re dead.’”
Kicking a path. Bad example. Bad
bad!--longing to trade the kid in
for a few square inches of clear flat surface, a few
ice cubes of silence. One’s birthright
for a mess of pottage? Sounds about right,
except it’s the wrong way around: first birthright, then pottage,
then mess. Then seven devils
worse than the first, and the last is Hauswerk.
What has purple spots and goes ouch?
Why did the chicken start to stink?
If a baby and a half can fill a diaper and a half in an hour and a half,
how much paper will it be able to flush down the toilet?
I sing the body electric
with its fuse blown, its heart clogged
like the vacuum cleaner, its brains a rotting mop.
“What about during his nap?”
“What do you mean, HIS nap?”
61
Some day the archaeologists will come.
Some day they will dig it all up.
They will find the pacifier,
the alphabet block, the matching button, the plastic letter the dog was playing
with, the sock with the pennies, two screwdrivers, both peelers, another sock,
the key.
They will be doing housework.
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