60. Then The Teacher Claps The Erasers

Then The Teacher Claps The Erasers

 

There are ways of turning pencils

into checkerboards and dice.

New chalk squeaks. Eight times five

makes fifty? Four three seven seven

 

upside-down, makes the word

"hell"--and antidisestablishment-

arianism is the biggest

of all. It took us years to learn

 

the names of capitals of states

and nations. Most have long forgotten

names like James K. Polk and Martin

Van Buren. But there is a way

 

to make small footprints climb a window;

if you speak in less than whispers

girls will still know what it is

you mean; and there are many codes.

 

We worked, homesteading our desks

like pioneers: making do with

what we had, crafting new things

out of the old. A chain letter

 

mapped our prospects: on we went,

armed with hairpins snaps and rubber

bands. When no more sticks of gum

were left, we timed our held breath.

 

Different smiles, the same tears:

we were so little and had so little

to learn and so much time to learn it,

all those years. All those years. 

 

58. Oedipusaurus Rex

                            Oedipusaurus Rex

 

A dinosaur on tree trunk legs with bull neck holding up beaklike jaws,

a dinosaur on all fours like a tank bristling with armor spikes,

a moose with his lock-and-load of antlers ready to charge,

a brass lion whose long tail curls up at the end like a raised fist--these four

for hours. "You're not the loudest roarer," warns

a dinosaur, "Daddy is around here." "Oh, I'LL

take care of HIM!" says the lion. "RRROARRR!", while

Daddy, silently

ignoring the lurking

four-something, tries to

keep doing his work.

 

59. Children's Games in Street and Playground

    Children's Games in Street and Playground

 

"I asked him, 'Do you know how to play Red Rover?' and he said,

 'Is that for Playstation or Gameboy?'"

 

Folkloric truism: children's rhymes

and games--of all our culture's customs, these

were slowest to change--were learned word for word,

word by word--known, as the saying went,

by heart. Were known by everyone, everyone knew

that any mistake must certainly be corrected

by everyone else,  no question whether what had

to be right had meaning. Because because.

      But now

we see the jungle--the "mighty jungle,","deepest,"

"red in tooth and claw," original

of all the other "jungles out there," ruled

by rote, not right--was only the rainforest,

which is to say, a desert lurking beneath

as little as less than an inch of fertile dirt,

everything else an incomprehensible knot

of sap and blood precariously perched

like one of those rare parrots, which, when pirated

elsewhere and told words, seems to speak.

 

 

note: "Children's Games in Street and Playground" is the title of a book by Iona and Peter Opie 

 

 

 

57. One More Good Day

                                    One More Good Day

 

After the maple cotton candy the only clouds in heaven are made of it

         and after showing him how to show the teenagers how to ring the bell                            three times bangding bangding bangding

splitting wood since I was seven         

screw the cigar

             and after the rides he actually went on the Scrambler

 I never dared even in high school

                           we come to the carrousel

and of course he wants to go on it

 

and here’s the wispy little blonde girl walking in a trance through a magic    forest of horses

         and here’s the chipmunk-faced tow-headed boy looking up to his                            father to pick one to ride

                  and here’s the hyperactive bullet-headed kid trying to shinny up

one of the poles

                           and here’s Tal petting his horse’s muzzle and explaining

 don’t worry it’s going to be a great ride

 

and here’s the music and the motion and here’s the little girl going past getting used to the up and down of it

         and here’s the tow-headed boy holding on tight to his pole

and here’s the bullet-headed kid spanking his horse’s rump to make it go faster

and here’s Tal looking at the machinery in the middle to figure out how it works

 

and here’s the little girl starting to believe in this horse and rocking in time with it

and here’s the tow-headed boy wiggling around trying to get used to the hard saddle

                  and here’s the bullet-headed kid looking as if he might try to stand                    on top of his horse the attendant moving over toward him

and here’s Tal bent over the head of his thoroughbred looking back pretending he’s worried about the others catching up

 

and here’s the little girl with a big grin for her mother as she goes past

         and here’s the tow-headed boy starting to look around at the other                                     horses

and here’s the bullet-headed kid leaning over trying to get something out of his pocket the attendant closer now

and here’s Tal pointing way up ahead and shouting I think he’s          recognized someone   

 

and here I am knowing it won’t get any better than this

         and here I am knowing it can’t get any better than this

                  and here I am knowing it doesn’t have to get any better than this

                           and here I am crying

 

and saying one more time the little almost

         prayer I’ve been saying almost every day

                  since the day he was born and before: “There’s

                           one more good day the bastards will never take away!”

 

 

 

56. Two Halves Of A Philosophy

 

               Two Halves Of A Philosophy

 

Aside from the nonstop monkeying of the maybe six-year-old brat

who keeps dashing from car to car poking and fingering and grabbing

it's the usual show, too many of those wicked flashes that

are less like warning lights than winks of the Devil's eye then go BLAM

but pyrotechnics nonetheless. A pink explosion fades to a purple shower

and while the crowd honks and cheers and whistles

I yell as loudly as I can without hurting any ears

"SO WHAT?" A puff of purple and green

transforms into a swarm of white divers. Big crowd noise

and another "SO WHAT?" A gold splash that lets

one big gold spark plummet to earth and just as it hits ends with a BANG gets cheers and a rousing "SO WHAT?" and then he starts

doing it, too: to the huge blooming of smoky trails that

turn orange and pink at the end, "SO WHAT?"

we chorus, and to the Christmasy red and green poppers that

let loose a school of downswimming fishes, in unison "SO WHAT?"

and to the one that seems to set the patriots ablaze with nothing

but red, white, and BANG, all together now "SO WHAT?" until

the little parentally oblivious nuisance that has been so busy trying to do

all he can to ruin it for everyone else finally stops and looks

up at us on the hood of our truck and asks "Why

do you keep saying 'So what'?" and wishing I could

be telling it to all the naysayers, timeservers, goodygoodenoughers,

and officialdumbs "illegitimi non carborundum" was meant to warn about

I let him have it, yelling back, over the bombs bursting in mid-air,

"WHY NOT?"

 

 

 

 

 

55. We Would Give You The World

          We Would Give You The World

 

The sun of your concentric universe,

you will marry Mommy, have babies yourself,

stay home with Daddy, and live in this town forever,

doing your Work in home and barn and garden,

riding high in the same carseat in

the same big truck on the same errands, between

the farm where you feed the cows and the farm supply store

catfood and birdseed come from, back and forth

from trout at the golf course to perch at the apple orchard,

maple syrup in spring, the leaves each fall,

from the inn that is called the Inn to

the market known as the Marketplace around

and around like rides at the Fair between people's houses

named, if named at all, for those who live there.

So it was

that the Christmas of your Third Birthday, we gave you

your mother's map of the places you love, in the colors

you'd choose, big enough for all your busy

wheeled fleet to live inside. And should

the map some day shrink

to less than the size of a bed, its boundaries prove

to have no more strength than the soft foods and cultured

milk you loved, turning to liquid if stirred,

once, at least, you will know Taliesin's World

if not the center of all centers was where

it should have been, in the place where the grandfather

clocks made music and time was always for.

 

 

 

54. Tradition

                           Tradition

 

To the solemn proponents of silent children,

to the seconders of memorization and rote recitation,

to the sentimentalists of schooldays hickory stick, old-time razor strop,

          fundamentalist PVC pipe, whoremaster coathanger and whatever else

                  a firm hand can lay a hand on,

to the true believers in something to believe in,

 

I say only this: the way it is done

is to face each other holding hands

looking each other straight in the eyes,

grinning from ear to ear, then start

leaping in unison while holding each other from falling backward while going

round and round in a circle--it doesn't matter

whether it's clockwise or counterclockwise--roaring together

JUMP, JUMP, JUMP FOR JOY!

JUMP, JUMP, JUMP FOR JOY!

JUMP, JUMP, JUMP FOR JOY!

JUMP, JUMP FOR JOY!

 

 

 

 

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.