Monthly Archives: October 2012

The borrowed child

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I once borrowed
A child/you could say
Lent.
She was lent to me
Because
her mother was a drug addict…I believed in the system…believed a caseworker…needed infinite
Light

This is not a poem.

She held the world in her eyes
And all the treasure I could have
Begged, borrowed, stolen
I would have traded for her

My in-between child

The little boy whose mother is a chalk angel
Lying beneath
The chaos of war

The little girl who believes the old man in the white car
Who does not really ever
Need her help to find a puppy

The baby glued to a wall
Broken like a vase on the hard stones
Another woman
Laid down on the floor

she would have been a good mother…

Monster.
It is the thing we call
A person who could do that to a child

My baby

He pulls the crystal bowl
Out as I am turned askew
Aside
Asunder

His father viewed this as s trinket
And did not hide it away
High where it could not be reached

Shatters in an instant
And we both
Stand amidst the shards

I say
It is not fair

And scoop him into arms
His siblings distract him from the wreckage

And I sweep up the mess.
Put poultices on the ground

Pretending for a moment
That there is a magic word
For love
Stronger than
Caustic
Glue

Girl
I would reach you
With my arms if I could
With my words if I must
Like walking on water
If I have to…

Resort to prayer.

Stop all the clocks (funeral blues)

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funeral blues

First of all, I have to confess, I love Auden but disliked Four Weddings and a Funeral. Until tonight I thought this was an autobiographical poem, not a song piece written for a larger work.

I love all the words. I love the heart and passion of this poem which is so integrally Auden. And it seems so essential that it is he being mourned, not she.

Again, the truth we have to face: the sentiment Auden expresses here is so lovely and profound, how can it be dismissed out of hand?

It can’t. We have to acknowledge that this is a heartbreaking poem of irrevocable love and loss.

I know plenty of straight guys who could learn a few things from Auden.

Normally this is the point in my writing where I would head for a wrap up–state an opinion, back it up with something and then conclusion–voila!

But I won’t today.

Today I just want to say out loud how lovely this anthem of love and grief is. It means something to me–floats in my geriatric repository of words lovely in their truth.

How about you?

What do you think of this complex genius? His body of work and life? And love? He says some amazing things about love…

IKEA erases women

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IKEA erases women

A giant multinational furniture company decides to erase images of modestly attired women to appease Saudi Arabian autocracy. And where is the outcry from women all over the world?

Feminism is dead. If not dead, useless, if this egregious act of dehumanizing women produces no response from us.

I went to the company website to protest and was directed to ask “Annie” a question.

I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t answer. She has probably been erased.

Happy Birthday to Me

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Last year I had not yet written an obscure self-published memoir called Just: a story of the lost and found.

I was not on Facebook. I was a private citizen wading through the havoc and grief caused by our decision to adopt a boy who would rob us all of our innocence.

My birthday is a watermark. Three years ago I did not know my children were being abused. We found out the weekend of Columbus Day 2009.

Rough memory
It stalks through family
Pictures, movies
Dates and times
No one is safe from it
The dark ominous
Scowl of truth

I have given myself some birthday gifts:
The gift of freedom from what people think
The gift of mobility
The gift of prayer (to the God Who Indeed Lives)
The gift of preservation and strength for my children
I have walked away from people I wanted to trust because they did not fight for my children
I fought instead

So it will be strange for me today, my birthday because I do celebrate these years–this gift of a broken life redeemed.

And I bless my God, my Friend for this new community He has given me

In place of the years
The locusts have eaten

I served my time…

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To understand the old woman
Walking down the quiet street
Tonight with a baby
Sleeping in her arms
You would have to look
Back to a room
In a borrowed house
Wooden floors/old carpet
And chairs from a garage sale
Heavy with layers
Of paint the two children
Small, shocking
Red
Hair they match each other not taking
Time outs in those beat up chairs/rooms/carpet
Years I don’t just
Wanna forget
Wanna unravel
Why he could hurt me so much
For so many years
And hurt my babies too?

They wiggle off the chairs
Again and again
Hold them the caseworker says
Hold onto them
I think
Until I had to let them go

The Hell of Words

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Once
When you were still a boy
I walked with you
Into cool water in a dying light
No deeper than your waist
Although the gulf itself
Stretched for miles
Out forever

When I draw words for hell
I get them from Sartre
Not Jesus
Or Dante
Like lighting a match
To draw fire

This room is airless enough
The faces of it’s inhabitants
Never vary/a rictus of pain

I wonder…
Are you as afraid as I am
Of the little things
That last
Forever?
And the possibility
That there will be
No way out.

After the Dry Season

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Used to
Take it for granted–
Rain come down

But now I don’t.

When the sky darkens
I hold still
Lightning snakes
Across the sky
I rejoice

Thunder calls out
The name of God
Alive still in the world

Rain falls
And I take nothing for granted
Splendor falls in a million pieces
Of refracted light
Makes gray avenues live
Each drop happy patter
From impossible clouds
Trees solemn in waiting
Doze above this parched earth
Gathering in it’s hands
Luminous pools
Of water