you dared not turn against
the dear severe mother,
oh so much harder to rebel
when you’re rebelling against something
so much harder to fight
when you’re fighting someone,
you wanted to be a shadowboxer
but when the intangible sprites became
punching bags, and the bags became
a stern old lady
you cowered in the corner of the ring
you returned that leather raincoat to James Dean
and, singing dirges of thyself for thy queen
rather than rage at the world
you submitted to preened oppression
caressed your shackles, twirled like a supermodel, and engaged
in self-pitying, self-conscious depression

wanted to kill yourself
and engrave your memory
upon spiteful psychological studies,
wanted to cut yourself
but that’d hurt more than you did
already,

so instead you rocked steady
in the cradle, your character
now disabled, your zeal for life
gouged by the knife
of that maternal arbiter, slicing
the fruit of youth
into presentable showpiece wedges
you weren’t a daughter
you were a front-yard hedge
an oers deuvre who tip-toed to the ledge of freedom
and swerved back into the stranglehold
and now you are your mother’s gold,
the hereditary genetic-fairy baked
you, gingerbread girl, her American pie
the candied apple of her eye
the pumpkin tart, whose imaginary carriage
is primed for marriage

you stooped to conquer;
now you aim to please
from your knees, you spread light wings
and flutter ebulliently about
buttering up the comely ostriches who squawk gossip through the halls
and hide their heads in holes to hide the holes in their heads,
O social butterfly
you landed on my arm
it tickled like hell
and then you were off, you doffed your anger
and coughed up that once-insurgent spirit
just like all your unswallowable meals
and while you plunge into a disinfected, disaffected toilet
your swirling, flighty personality
is now only describable
by that vapidly vile word
“nice”.