MERRILY, MERRILY
We called it big money
for a long time,
then we raked a pile to burn and
learned that its burning is delightful,
aromatic and fine for roasting
marshmallows, but not hot enough
to melt the ice which we'd let fix us.
We called it a circle of friends radiant
around a table (we were getting warmer),
imagining ourselves forged into a wheel of
light rolling through space, but when
the beasts which hid behind our faces--
dogs, pigs, sharks, giant anteaters,
and so forth--came forth to gorge
themselves at the table, we knew
there could be no fusion of us in that zoo--
not even a peaceful Sunday dinner.
So off we went to jog in the rain
to get our morning fix of endo-morphine.
With our bodies as bait, we trolled back and
forth across the sexual lake
until, in that shallow water,
sex became alphabetical.
Then some of us withdrew to play
at drier, safer games, but some of us
pushed deeper and were drawn
into murder, and we were shot, hung,
stoned, electrocuted, incinerated, de-
capitated, buried alive, or given
a lethal injection--depending upon
the bent of the local population.
We, the blood-fearing remnant, continued
killing time with our toys: paint brushes,
poetry, cosmetics, computers, careers,
bibles, baseballs, and babas, and we had
a bunch of fun but got so lonesome
at 3 A.M. that we had to pay someone--
psychiatrist, prostitute, priest, or
chiropractor--to pretend to give a
shit about us, but we knew better, having
seen the anteater in the mirror of each other.
Well, that's the way things skipped along
while we waited for the trash compactor.
But then, just a moment after the last
late-show's dying ember, a nameless
face appeared from nowhere,
to finally give us the picture:
Things are not what they seem.
Row, row, row your boat, gently.
WAITING FOR MOM
Old women will not enter paradise:
they will be made young and beautiful first.
You wasted a lot of years drinking, refusing to wait.
But those years passed by quickly, and that
should be some compensation.
Then late one night you realized
that you weren't going out much anymore,
that you weren't eating much anymore,
and that your room was piling up ridiculously
with garbage and dirty laundry.
At that moment you knew you were waiting,
and it became as clar as teardrops
that what you were waiting for
was your mother to come through the door,
give you a kiss, clean up the mess,
and fix you a little lunch.
Waiting was easy at first, but soon
it piled up, got heavier, harder to carry
just when you thought that you couldn't
do it anymore, it came to you how--
a simple trick of breathing.
Then the waiting got easier
and it became clear as dewdrops
that what you were waiting for
had to happen.
Of course, there was always some skeptic in the crowd,
for example, your father, who would say things like--
"She's dead and she's not coming back.
Your mother died in 1959, son,
and she's not ever coming back"
You shrugged him off because you could see,
beneath his Ph.D. and his Phi Beta Kappa key,
your father was severly mentally defective.
And you forgave him.
Probably he'd been born that way.
And just when the waiting began to be fun--
pure pleasure like sitting out all night long
in the 60s waiting for the sunrise of LSD--
it happened: your mother
came through the door like the sunrise,
looking young and beautiful, just like Mohammed
said that she would.
In fact, at first, for a moment
you thought that the woman might be
a very young Loretta Young,
but when she leaned over to kiss you,
and you looked in her eyes--
twin lakes of pure mother love--
you were certain she wasn't Loretta,
but your very own mother come back
after nearly thirty years, to see you.
Anyway, she kissed you, and with her magic wand
instantly cleaned up your room
and fixed you a little lunch
including Campbell's pork and beans
and then the two of you
came to the rosegarden in the backyard
where you were joined by Sweet Jesus
and He walked with you
and He talked with you
in a voice as clear as churchbells ringing
and it was very early in the morning
and the dew was still on the roses
and every once in a while the three of you
would stop to smell one.
But not really.
It fades away.
That beautiful Methodist Sunday school
fantasy fades away.
It isn't really you and Mom and Sweet Jesus
in the bellringing backyard rosegarden.
It's really you ad Mom and Dad
and Hopalong Cassidy.
under a clear black river of stars
deep in the heart of Texas
and you're sitting around a mesquite campfire
with your backs against your saddles
and you're laughing and singing
and telling lies
and waiting for the sunrise.
Tonto, the Faithful, is there too.
And he keeps the fire going all night long,
and he kills a few rattlesnakes and scorpions
with his bow and arrows,
and he never says a word.
