Pretend you go

pretend you had a lost daughter

Who in your mind will always be

A beautiful baby girl

Now pretend that in order to survive

You start to see your beautiful lost baby

In everyone

Then “everyone” starts to do things they really should not do

Go places they should not go

Smash through rules…

designed for their safety

So you, poor sot, try to warn them away…

From the crap they should not get into

But they don’t really wanna listen

Because who the heck are you anyway?

(Half-crazed stranger with some lost kid)

Yet you still 

love them

You know because you lost a child.

So you go find them

In the crack houses

Strip joints

And IRS offices where they work

…and screw up royally

Because you know

That is what love does

Abstract-I get it

So let me try once more–

Years ago I rode on a bus in a country men travelled to in order to have “legal” sex with minors.

A white man got on the bus with a girl from this other country.

A girl, not a woman.

We.  The people on the bus.  Watched them travel together.  Knowing (ball-parking, at least)…their destination.

Their terrible destination.

If she is alive somewhere I would hold her

Tell her her “job” was not her fault 

Tell her I love you

(No matter what)

–I love you

Now please darling, 

Come home.

Flowers in her hair

nostalgia is no good 

When the pretty back flip you 

Executed clean off the kicker

Is called a tantrum

And the suit this party

Requires

Will not cover

The girl who was twelve yesterday

Six a minute ago

Now at least 18

Still not old enough for legal margaritas

Which was always just another name for daisies

Can you see

The pretty, young girls

All in a row?

Tutus and princess tiaras/

Flowers in her hair

Kafka and me…at the Bikini Contest

first, he corrects the misnomer–

“Body image contest!”

Still, sly words written on the human body

Numbers, he corrects again

Pointing to the charcoal digits written

on their extremities

So close to the branding iron or…

The shadow of all his gone siblings

Fall ash across our faces

his once-alive sisters would have had 

A string of dark

Numbers tattooed on young skin

Which is how he got here in the first place–

I remind him of my own

Memories from The Penal Colony

How do you

“Be just”

Without piercing 

The heart of every man?

I ask. Brush his beautiful dark

Hair back

How young you look, darling

He flinches as we almost touch

Ghosts at the bikini contest

Chimera Sunshine

you were always

Mythical.

A place I longed to be

A harbor in the storm

Heck–flowers and chocolate!

Go no distance to describe

The way these stem cells of each

Her babies carry her

As she and they 

Grow up

Her eldest may lodge 

In her vision 

Her youngest in her chest

And each in between

Find places in her blood and bone to

Insinuate their eternal

DNA into hers

You might call them sneaky

But she will call them all

Dear–

Dear to stay

When each day she fears

This child will be too soon

“A grown-assed man, Mom!”

(Sic)

And she will compress and fold

Each memory of her babies

In the laugh lines

Around her eyes.

Pirate House

Donning her eye patch 

From the foyer

Of this quiet

suburban domicile

mother spies the place 

Where she will hoist 

The skull-and-crossed bones

Talisman

of her new-found pirate

Heart.  She shimmies the gutter pipe

Hangs the flag from the gabled roof

Bids the children–

Swab the deck!  Hoist the sail! Board the stern!

Bemused, they do their level best

This ship once an ordinary…

Home?

Until Papa returns

Salutes his lawless mate (sailcloth on her makeshift mast

suspiciously similar to 

laundry on the line)

The Jolly Roger, eh? He asks

Surprising unfazed.

Come down, my Pirate Queen
And tell all

Your loyal crew

What hast tha’ plundered for our dinner?