53. The Very Best Boo In The Whole Wide World

The Very Best Boo In The Whole Wide World

 

Careless Love, the girl in the song,

shouldn't have to have her baby alone;

you're going to get your backhoe and bring that man

back. As for the drunk driver

who crashed into your friend at the gas station,

he's headed for jail: you'll catch him with your fishing

net. Peter Pan wasn't the Good Guy,

he cut off Captain Hook's hand. Even your Daddy

is bad, for calling you bad. You're taken your time

and made up your mind: no one ever dies...

 

And the children, some younger than you,

who spoke with the voices of Gods when put in the arms

of Moloch; the Irish infants who climbed toward Heaven

hanging from their mothers' long hair; the Indian

babies whose bodies your father's father was asked

if he wanted to see being fed to the sacred turtles

because he asked such good questions about

the Taj Mahal; your mother's mother's Chosen

cousins, blond as you--the Diaments--

whose brilliance became that of Nazi flames...

 

Where are they, and what do they say? Let me

save you the trouble of finding them and tell you: time

like everything else is flowing backward from

the center of the sun. There is that in you that is

brighter than any blade being drawn, pointed

sharper than any explosive spark. Your glances can

strike like stares, and when you stare, the lights

of your eyes are dancing and can't be met. Your voice!--

too clear, makes others think of fever, a future

for talking birds, not people. My Extra Terrestrial

 

 

They want to find us out: you

are the reason the weapons on both sides are drawing

back higher in horror; factories are collapsing

because you work too hard; the gangs of uprooted

budgetary consequences hungrily roaming

the countryside have learned your secret fear

of being eaten. There's only one way: stop hating

hatred. Say you're sorry before it's too late.

 

 

52. A Good Constitution

         A Good Constitution   

 

O my one son,

your toys are doing their work: your backhoe

is loading heartbreak onto your dumptruck

and carrying it into your room to the place where

a tower, impossibly unbalanced, holds

together with my tears. If anything

should happen to you, whole species of animals

would stiffen at once, the cookie-cutter shapes of the world

harden to cemetery sculpture--even the last

collapsed flat level of the endless end itself

torment me with hints of your secretive smile. My past,

that best once-upon-a-time of puzzles,

means less to me than yours: let what I have been

become the past of your past, a purposely vague

body of constitutional precedents

for you to draw upon and justify

whatever you must become, beyond all my.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

51. The Young Mothers

            The Young Mothers

 

I take my big little boy to a basketball game

                                    at my old school,

                                  and see

      the same--                                           all!

          the same                               as ever:

                headlong breakneck guards,

           forwards without finesse,

               an overmuscled center sweating some putback scoring,

                                   and then

        (-to my surprise

           at being surprised-)

     not the same cheerleaders

       ragtagging along

         after the boys:                   was this

      what I

       once lusted

         for?                            Where

           did it go?

     They're as bland

       as butter, this is how a lake

         would look to a seafarer.                 No,

give me that which makes

virginity look like beauty.

                                    The next day

we go to playgroup,

                 he, the only

                       "only child,"

                 I, the only

                    only father.

                 Together, we're

           safe:

                  without my adult heavyhandedness

                at hand, my grown heavyheartedness

                  for taking to heart, he'd

                  probably fly straight

                into orbit; but also

 

                 without his nonsensical

                    interruptions and daredevil

                 stunts to buoy me up, I'd

                 go right out of my mind into

                my body from watching

these women!--

            stripped

               of more than clothing by

             the nursing and

                the naplessness of

                                    their charges,

            their babyfat helplessness

               gone and in its place

             responsibility and response--

                                    an electricity

            of watchfulness that calls to mind

               what my brother told me of            the eyes

             of Islamic women

behind the veil. Even more so

           than whores, they are living under

             conditions where no touch is foreign:

                                    having given

           birth, subsequent absurd

             insistences and hapless

               demands from their endlessly

            tumescent offspring are        so readily met

that even I, watching

          beneath the put-upon looks

            their deftness with flesh and elastics,

can see their womanliness as                    plainly as the parts of a baby.

They would do anything a man wanted            for the sake of their children

          except that adultery like incest

                 is unthinkable: who would fool

              with something that once, when you thought

            you were cleaning it, went off?

Besides, I

          put myself out of any such games when

             all through pregnancy I gained weight

                and all the time I would have been nursing--

                                    even felt my                                      

                                    wife's/my son's

                                    milk coming in. A man

            is to love all women, not all

                   that he might do to them. So

here we are:

           while my son

                plays peacefully between

                        a girl who squeals and screeches and

                        another who sulks and sneaks

                I sit sharing silently between

                        women talking about what

                        their husbands have done to them--women

at the age

          when what they are is there

          equally in each part, essential

          intensity pulsing, endlessly

          revealing what a man

                cannot help his whole strength

                        flexing to meet: that she

                                is someone's wife means nothing

                        need be added to this and

                                nothing could be taken away.

It was

                                    for this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

50. Where It Begins

            Where It Begins

           (two years, 10 months)

"But I have to fly my airplane there,

because that's the airport!" he insists,

aiming his fuselage at the place the runways of

his mother's thighs meet. The game

of jumping off her chair between her legs

has gone on long enough, she concludes, crossing them,

and tries to soothe the savage beast by singing:

"Old MacDonald had a farm,

E-I-E-I-O,

And on that farm he had a" "Mommy-mom!"

"With a" "wiggle-wiggle here, and a wiggle-wiggle there"...

How can you prevent

a crawler from wrestling across whatever comes next

and practicing pelvic thrusts? Or stop a toddler

from filling his pants and hoping it's a live one?

"What are little boys made of, made of,

What are little boys made of?

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails"--not once

has he tried to change the words of that one.

Like all the males of all the ladies who told me

they wouldn't buy guns, he has invented one.

"I want to come downstairs while you and Mommy

join each other." Almost does. Comes in, takes one

deep breath, and bursts out "What did Daddy do?"

"My dear interruptus, I would tell you, if you weren't

such a blabbermouth." But how can we worry about it?

He already knows, and once he had enough words

said: "Daddy sang 'Om' when I first peeked out."

It was dark rather than light, when it began,

and noisy rather than quiet, especially at the end,

when he got stuck: "Ouch!"

was what he was saying after he came out.

Asked if he could hear his mother's heart

he reminds us: "I could look back up and see it!"

A tough birth--part of his head is still pointed

in that direction--but one way or another,

sooner or later...He says when he grows up he'll marry

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

100 girls!--each with a fur gina--

all we can do is laugh in a way that doesn't

belittle him--so often it's in the rocking

of laughing that the swaying of loving starts.                              

 

 

49. Social Progress

        Social Progress

 

Midwinter, midday, midjourney, my two-year-old Birthday Boy

is making social progress. He walks like Daddy walks,

if not when Daddy walks. Having to walk

when Daddy does, he'll walk on the side of the sidewalk

on slick frozen puddles and slippery snowplow tracks where

he falls. He cries. Having to cry louder

to hear himself outdoors makes faces that keep him

from seeing where he is going so he stops again

to cry out against injustice--what could be more

clearly social progress than sacrificing

oneself in a just cause?--then the cold tears

down his neck and the way a sudden coughing spell

interrupts his crying makes him yell

out all the warm air in his lungs until

the sharp air makes him cry until he's tired

and hungry, tired because he's hungry because he's tired because

most of all, having forgotten where he was,

he needs to express himself by stopping again.

I carry him as far as the next place

a dog has made social progress on the sidewalk,

then he wants down. "Yes," "yeah," "yup,"

"uh-huh," "mm-hm"--oh, these affirmations!

A truck pushes past, making social progress.

He stops. Volume signifies importance.

He wants to see which kind of truck it is.

He needs to make sure this truck isn't going

to turn--they do turn--and decide to try

the sidewalk for a change. Time keeps moving

the way a heart keeps moving. The sun must be moving,

his shadow is bigger, big enough to keep him

watching. This is enough to make Jesus

glad he only had to stop three times.

At last he rouses, and decides to try

trekking across the snow in search of sticks--

of tools, of inventions--of social progress!

Rescued from the wilderness, at last

we go, not hand in hand, but side by side,

at the pace most parents find: a little ahead,

a little behind, as though instead of two

out walking, we are one poor creature swimming

clumsily back to the place it first fell in.                                           

 

48. Hauswerk

 

                            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.

 

 

47. Desaparacidos Nortamericanos

 note: Though I felt compelled to write this, do not feel compelled to read it. Putting the words in place was like building a wall with 100 pound stones, and I was a complete wreck afterward. I read it in public once, and do not expect to do so again.

The reference in the title is to "the disappeared" of Argentina, left-wing "enemies" abducted and murdered and secretly buried by a right-wing dictatorship.

 

      Desaparacidos Nortamericanos

 

“...one of 150,000 children who are abducted each year. 50,000 are taken by strangers, such as sex offenders or extortionists. Parents in custody disputes abduct 100,000. Ten percent are found alive. Ten percent are found dead. The rest are never seen by their parents again.”

                                   --Associated Press, Nov.21, 1982

 

“Each year, 2,000 unidentified youngsters beaten beyond recognition are buried,” Brasco said, “leaving behind unknowing parents living in anguish and clinging to the hope that their missing son or daughter is still alive.”

                                   --United Press International, 1983

 

As the little hands keep pushing you away

but without hitting, and as he keeps explaining

“no,” as if that one word were enough,

we ask you please to listen, not to his pleading,

but only to its echo inside you, to know

it IS there, still there; and as you watch

first the astonishment and then the grief

curdle his face, taste the aftertaste

of the sweetness of triumph, its milklike certainty,

and ask what ceaseless caring would certainly have

been yours, had you been ours, for both of us

have been more than good to the poor, the bereft,

the foreign, antagonized, all, in case it was you

that it might have been. When at last

the heaving gives way to sobbing, the sobbing to sighing

and deep breathing, sleep

beside him--he will expect it--and in the night

will turn to you and call you his mother. By daylight

you’ll know your mistake: he says he’s three

but he knows his name, remembers where he lives,

can dial. You’ll have to go younger

next time.

              Those who steal must be forgiven,

we’ve told him, for needing so much. We cannot give someone

away who has always been his own, but we can

give you what the world would not: full

responsibility. You are the only

one who will be there to witness what

he might have been.

                           But before you begin, will you

ask him to sing? And he loves people to laugh,

then you’d be singing, too. You’d always remember

that happiness, you’d know the world is not

so empty a place, perhaps the Voice would learn

it can learn...

                When you’re tying him down, please

don’t double knot it, he’ll want to untie it himself

when it’s over. While you’re beating his buttocks bloody

think of the hundreds of times we’ve had that chance--

holding him holding us, running our hands over

that simple curve simply to move without break

from petting his back to rubbing his feet--that, too,

would have been yours. And when you’re bursting in,

consider how much he hoped his insides would someday

hold something growing. When you have taken the part

that was always meant to give life anyway

and he’s all done making love with even his body

heat, may his untroubled flesh call back

your life as an unborn child, back before

they cut you from your  mother, then yourself,

then left, because you cried whenever you wet.

We do not ask you to remember us

 

until the next day, when you start to miss him

and wonder what to do with him, both

as the same time--now you know what it’s like

to be a parent. Then may you think of our hearts

as he seems to be so much heavier. Think of our arms

as you wonder what place is best for him. Think of our eyes

when you find that hidden depth--we, who will see

everywhere the missing pieces of him.

 

 

 

 

46. Christmas 1984

               Christmas 1984

 

It was to be the best Christmas present

ever, for a father who had stayed

home with his infant son: The Family of Children, I saw

the picture book was called. I opened

it.

    Pouring tears,

I closed it. My wife asked

what it was. I opened the book. She took it.

She looked at it. She closed it and gave it back. I put it away

for three years:

                     the starving baby

is chewing a filthy scrap of cloth to ease its dying--the rag

of its mother's

                    breast like a kid's balloon after

the happy-gas has squeaked out and the happy

Happy Face face is a dwarfed, wrinkled, hideously

grinning puddle of rubber

                                  or what is left of a frog

when a giant waterbug grips it in its pincers

and slowly and leisurely swallows the soft parts until

there is nothing left but a flattened, eyeless frogskin...

                                                                   What

black milk will we have to drink before we are done

making believe such feedings never happen?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

45. “What could a housewife know about such things?”

 

   “What could a housewife know about such things?”

 

I let the buds of yeast dissolve to milk,

stir the liquids until their color is even,

add just enough flour so the ingredients

can easily be blended by the mixer,

pour the batter in pans before it stiffens,

put it to rise with no additional heat--

and up it comes bubbling, lopsidedly heaving,

in spite of all my precautions punchdrunkenly bobbing and weaving.

 

I think of a certain domed brow surmounting

the pinched frown of a fixed cameo face

with a nose that pushed the two eyes out of place

above a chin with room for another mouth;

I think of the way in album pictures a house

rises and swells and sinks and shifts as it changes;

I think of the way a garden never stays

free of pests and diseases; and of maps of the fates of nations.

 

44. Something To Believe In

                  Something To Believe In

 

He’s almost three, he’s learning words’ first letters--

maybe this is the year I’ll have to explain

Santa’s claws, Round John Virgin, gay apparel,

angel herds, bobtails, Orient Are,

and why the wise men never came again,

I think to myself, hearing the carillon

as I carry him and the daily Herald across

the street: there’s the church, the biggest thing

in the middle of town, Christmas music swelling

from stained-glass windows like the smell of a cake.

All year long, he’s been after me to sing

more Christmas music, defiantly performing

the one that he remembers: “Fa-la-la-la-laaa!”

Kirsten is in there, Kirsten’s father is Minister,

why has he never asked to go there? Even

foul-mouthed and fundamentally un-

repentant friends are sending their children for

the sake of “having something to believe in”...

He doesn’t notice. Into the truck and off

to Back Acres Farm for a gallon of Carringtons’ raw

milk: the shining stainless steel bulk tank

the biggest bottle a baby ever saw;

and cows, a double row of jaws extending

farther than he has ever dared to walk.

He feeds his favorite heifer, then he enters

the aisle between the facing heads in search

of calves. There’s usually one or two, the bright

side of there usually being, but not for long,

one or a couple of down or disabled cows.

(“Have to stay in the black to make the white stuff.”)

A few days with their dams and calves are strong

enough to bawl with the other little doughies.

“Calves don’t like to be petted,” I explain,

but he proves me wrong, he finds one lying down

and sets to work. I stand there, passing time

by wondering what the cows get out of this.

To have a place in these rows...it must add up...

so many nodding heads...like toward the end

of contradancing “Bull Durham”?...or being part

of those Shaker ceremonies, men on one side,

women on the other?...Then I see it,

as if the air had suddenly grown cold

and cleared: the automatic watering pans

like fonts of holy water; breath like incense

puffing from censers; those becalmed bodies

heavy with furs, all silent, while their cheekbones

work like those of the aged widows who stayed

after to pray for the husbands for whom they had bought

--Mass. And the Garden of Eden was God’s barn.

So there’s my son, kneeling in manure

to bump foreheads with a runt calf,

the image of the innocents who died

in the Canaan tribes the Israelites were proud

to put to the sword. I think of Jesus pleading,

“Don’t be like the Romans, tend to your sheep!”

The butcher says, “Kids like him, they’re our future.”

“No, he isn’t,” I said. “He’ll be shot.

He doesn’t like to fight--those are the ones

we’re paying to have killed off in El”...Salvador?

EL SALVADOR IS SPANISH FOR VIETNAM.

He’ll understand the Romans: they’re the big kids

kitchie-kooing and poking and pinching him--

the Legion types, whose laws now say it’s wrong

to buy him hours-fresh, unpasteurized milk.

He isn’t looking, so I get to watch

his face--so balanced--people say that he could

be a model, make us lots of money...

Off he charges, after a bigger calf

to cuddle with. It cowers by its mother.

“What’s that on the cow’s ear?” he wonders.

“That’s a number tag. There’s too many cows

to give them all names, there’s too many different shapes

of black and white to ever remember them.”

Maybe there won’t be so much explaining to do.

God is what it is that makes it so

you never tire of the markings on cows.

It must have happened in a place like this,

where many had given birth, as if Christ came

to bring men back to women, thence to God.

He’ll understand that Mary dreamed her baby

was someone very special, and so it became--

take away the Roman Saturnalian

calendar coincidence, the rendering

unto Caesar what was Jesus, the kitsch

that German dustmop the Tannenbaum picked up,

put it back into summer, and what would be left?

All done at last. Time to go get our milk.

He’ll understand that a man can’t give milk,

but would if he could, and sometimes gives his life

instead: “This is my body; this is my blood.”