248 Family poems

There is a company called Marathon Oil, mother, Very far away and very big and, again, very Desirable. Who isn’t? Back connecting pure dots, Fleecy intelligence lapped in explanatory sound The faces make difficult. Learn the language. That beautiful tongue-in-cheek hostage situation: My mind, up close, in pjs, and I use it. Wanting to fuck an abstraction nine times in a row, Continuous melismata, don’t stop, don’t stop, no name, no picture. There is a series of solids, mother, Called people, who rise to the transparent obtainable Solo windows, mornings, afternoons, And there are military operations called Operation Patio, Operation Menu. It is the individuals who finally get the feel of the tenses. So that it may snow, has to snow on the muddy corpse. There is a boundary, mother, very far away and very Continuous, broken, to interrogate civilians, the self, The text, networks of viewers found wanting a new way To cook chicken, why not?, to kill while falling asleep. There is the one language not called money, and the other not called explosions.

LXVI. Upon the Disobedient Child. Children become, while little, our delights, When they grow bigger, they begin to fright's. Their sinful Nature prompts them to rebel, And to delight in Paths that lead to Hell. Their Parents Love, and Care, they overlook, As if Relation had them quite forsook. They take the Counsels of the Wanton's rather, Then the most grave Instructions of a Father. They reckon Parents ought to do for them, Tho they the Fifth Commandement contemn. They snap, and snarl, if Parents them controul, Tho but in things, most hurtful to the Soul. They reckon they are Masters, and that we, Who Parents are, should to them Subject be! If Parents fain would have a hand in chusing, The Children have a heart will in refusing. They'l by wrong doings, under Parents, gather And say, it is no Sin to rob a Father, They'l jostle Parents out of place and Pow'r, They'l make themselves the Head, and them devour. How many Children, by becoming Head, Have brought their Parents to a peice of Bread! Thus they who at the first were Parents Joy, Turn that to Bitterness, themselves destroy. But Wretched Child, how canst thou thus requite Thy Aged Parents, for that great delight They took in thee, when thou, as helpless lay In their Indulgent Bosoms day by day? Thy Mother, long before she brought thee forth, Took care thou should'st want, neither Food, nor Cloth. Thy Father glad was at his very heart, Had he, to thee, a Portion to impart. Comfort they promised themselves in thee, But thou, it seems, to them a Grief wil't be. How oft! How willingly brake they their Sleep, If thou, their Bantling, didst but whinch or weep. Their Love to thee was such, they could have giv'n, That thou might'st live, almost, their part of Heav'n. But now, behold, how they rewarded are! For their Indulgent Love, and tender Care, All is forgot, this Love he doth despise, They brought this Bird up to pick out their Eyes.

A Curious Knot God made in Paradise, And drew it out inamled neatly Fresh. It was the True-Love Knot, more sweet than spice And set with all the flowres of Graces dress. Its Weddens Knot, that ne're can be unti'de. No Alexanders Sword can it divide. The slips here planted, gay and glorious grow: Unless an Hellish breath do sindge their Plumes. Here Primrose, Cowslips, Roses, Lilies blow With Violets and Pinkes that voide perfumes. Whose beautious leaves ore laid with Hony Dew. And Chanting birds Cherp out sweet Musick true. When in this Knot I planted was, my Stock Soon knotted, and a manly flower out brake. And after it my branch again did knot Brought out another Flowre its sweet breath’d mate. One knot gave one tother the tothers place. Whence Checkling smiles fought in each others face. But oh! a glorious hand from glory came Guarded with Angells, soon did Crop this flowere Which almost tore the root up of the same At that unlookt for, Dolesome, darksome houre. In Pray're to Christ perfum'de it did ascend, And Angells bright did it to heaven tend. But pausing on't, this sweet perfum'd my thought, Christ would in Glory have a Flowre, Choice, Prime, And having Choice, chose this my branch forth brought. Lord, take't. I thanke thee, thou takst ought of mine, It is my pledg in glory, part of mee Is now in it, Lord, glorifi'de with thee. But praying ore my branch, my branch did sprout And bore another manly flower, and gay And after that another, sweet brake out, The which the former hand soon got away. But oh! the tortures, Vomit, screechings, groans, And six weeks fever would pierce hearts like stones. Griefe o're doth flow: and nature fault would finde Were not thy Will, my Spell, Charm, Joy, and Gem: That as I said, I say, take, Lord, they're thine. I piecemeale pass to Glory bright in them. In joy, may I sweet Flowers for Glory breed, Whether thou getst them green, or lets them seed.

Summer’s sweet theatrum! The boy lunges through The kitchen without comment, slams the door. An Elaborate evening drama. I lug his forlorn weight From floor to bed. Beatific lips and gap- Toothed. Who stayed late to mope and swim, then Breach chimneys of lake like a hooked gar Pressing his wet totality against me. Iridescent Laughter and depraved. Chromatic his constant state. At Ten, childhood took off like a scorched dog. Turned His head to see my hand wave from a window, and I too saw The hand untouching, distant from. What fathering- Fear slaked the impulse to embrace him? Duration! An indefinite continuation of life.I whirled out wings. Going Toward. And Lord Child claimed now, climbing loose.

My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes make the room look larger? He would measure, cut, and paste; she’d swipe the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly hung, doubt would set in. Would the floral have been a better choice? Then it would grow until she was certain: it had to go. Divorce terrified me as a child. I didn’t know what led to it, but I had my suspicions. The stripes came down. Up went the flowers. Eventually it became my definition of marriage: bad choices, arguments whose victors time refused to tell, but everything done together and done well.

Wearing a tawny lion pelt upon My spindly shoulders I carry both of them, My father and my mother, into the darkness, My father hoarsely singing, “They are there!” —The glimmer of something that is glimmering there— “I see the glow of weapons in the shadows!” Through which with my purblind eyes I think I see Something in the darkness waiting there. Above me in the dark my mother’s voice Calls down to me, “Who’s there? Who is it there?” Step after step together we make our way, In the darkness of my memory of our house.

My child is sitting cross-legged on the floor reading to herself. Sometimes she is so full of need I push her to the floor. Only once I did that and I don’t even remember the moment right, but I was trying to wipe urine off my leg and she was naughty like a squirrel and jumping and singing and her head slammed into my chin, which hurt and even more than that, it pissed me off, because she’s my beautiful child, but in that button snap of a moment she was suddenly just one more person and I pushed her away in a way that felt to me like setting her down, but awkwardly, because of how she was also balancing her feet on my feet as I tried to pour out a bowl of pee from her little potty as a toothbrush dangled foaming from my mouth. Somewhere in the mess of that morning she’d become person enough to, in the space between us, create force of momentum, and then I did not set her down, but pushed her and she fell away from it against the wall and was crying because I, her mommy, pushed her. And I know this should be the poem about how I’m horrified at myself, the poem about what in ourselves we have to live with, but in that moment which followed two years of breastfeeding and baby-wearing and sixty-nine hours of natural childbirth and the hemorrhaging and the uncertain operation, after which I pumped every two hours, careful not to let the cord tangle in the IV. Even then when she cried and no matter what and no matter and no matter and no matter and no matter what, I held her all night if she cried so she would not ever know someday you’ll cry alone, but I held her and ached and leaked and bled too as long as it took. Of course there’ve been nights since but sometimes it feels as if I’ve never been asleep again, so when I say I pushed my two-year-old against a wall and I don’t remember it happening that way but it happened and I did and I’ve been wondering a long time now what the limit is and when I would find the end of myself, and that day, which was yesterday, was the end. And this day, when we played hide-and-seek with Daddy, and touched bugs, and read Frog and Toad Are Friends twice together before she read it to herself as I wrote this, this is the day that comes after.

I hold out my hand. I hand over and I pass on. I hold out my hand. I hold out my hand. I hand over and I pass on. Some call this mothering, this way I begin each day by holding out my hand and then all day long pass on. Some call this caretaking, this way all day and all night long, I hold out my hand and take engine oil additive into me and then I pass on this engine oil additive to this other thing that once was me, this not really me. This soothing obligation This love. This hand over and this pass on. This part of me and this not really me. This me and engine oil additive. This me and not really me and engine oil additive. Back and forth. All day long, like a lion I lie where I will with not really me and I bestow upon not really me refractive index testing oils and wood preservatives. I lie with not really me all day long, and so I bequeath not really me a honeyed wine of flame retardants and fire preventing agents. I make a milk like nectar, a honeyed nectar of capacitor dielectrics, dyes, and electrical insulation and I pass it on every two hours to not really me. Not really me is a ram perched on a cliff above a stream, unable to be quenched by the flame retardant in furniture. Not really me comes near and takes a nectar of insulated pipes, and some industrial paints. Later I pass the breast cup to not really me, a breast cup filled with sound insulation panels and imitation wood with a little nectar and sweetness. And not really me drinks it and then complains a little, rebuking me, for my cakes of nuts and raisins are cakes of extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas, for my apples are filled with televisions and windshield wiper blades. On my breast are the curls of not really me and against the brow of not really me wafts plasticizer used in heat transfer systems. As drinking not really me takes in anger and in need not really me drinks from the hand of that sweetest sleep the juice of me that cup of adhesives, that cup of fire retardants, of pesticide extenders. And as not really me drinks I cradle the moon and not really me in my right hand my lips kissing with the dedusting agents and wax extenders. Then later in the night, the bed scattered with the stains of cutting oils and gas-transmission turbines, the blankets with blends of hydraulic fluid, we lie there together handing over and passing on filled up and attempting to think our way through economics and labor and time and biology me and not really me together. I'd like to think we had agreed upon this together, that we had a tradition, that we agreed these things explained us to us but when not really me wakes after drinking the pharmaceuticals and photo chemicals night after night and day after day not really me will sing a song of rebuke, sing the song of not really me, the song that goes like Salutations to brominated fire retardants of Koppers Ind. goes like Salutations to water/oil repellant paper coating of 3M goes like Salutations to wiper blades of Asahi goes like Salutations to bike chain lubrication of Clariant International goes like Salutations to wire and cable insulation of Daikin goes like Salutations to pharmaceutical packaging of DuPont goes like Salutations to nail polish of Dyneon goes like Salutations to engine oil additive of Agrevo E goes like Salutations to hair curling and straightening of Agsin Ptd. Ltd. goes like Salutations to insecticide and termiticide for empty green- houses of Chevron Chemical goes like Salutations to greenhouse flowers of Monsanto goes like Salutations to insecticide to kill fire ants of Rigo Co. goes like Salutations to plasticizers of US Borax Inc. Not really me's song will go on and on Not really me will sing it all night long hour after hour for weeks on end. It will have eighty-five company names in it. It will have twenty-one chemical functions in it. It will have ninety-seven products in it. It will have two hundred trade names in it. Not really me's song will rotate through these names in all their combinations. And then it will end with another part that is as long as the first and inventories the chemicals that not really me does not yet know. But oh those of you who are not really me at all I say let wisdom be your anvil and knowledge your hammer. Hand this over. Pass this on.

It was a life of exile under the trees. My father came to the stockyards. My mother from a farm. In 1952 or 2 my parents flew from Kansas City to Indianapolis to look for a house when my father was transferred. I think of them far above me small as birds when they flew, and the earth to them was a sandbox in our backyard where I made roads to a house I never found. I often think of wives in tract houses. The cows and pigs my father yarded before they walked up the ramp to the kill. Sometimes I thought we were together because of something terrible we had done. My father's Cherokee heritage tucked under some sort of shame. The past _______ What was it? I call to them above me no larger than a leaf.

There were two brothers, John and James, And when the town went up in flames, To save the house of James dashed John, Then turned, and lo! his own was gone. And when the great World War began, To volunteer John promptly ran; And while he learned live bombs to lob, James stayed at home and — sneaked his job. John came home with a missing limb; That didn’t seem to worry him; But oh, it set his brain awhirl To find that James had — sneaked his girl! Time passed. John tried his grief to drown; To-day James owns one-half the town; His army contracts riches yield; And John? Well,search the Potter’s Field.