Lawns, cerulean blue on broken brushes, water that goes on foreverPeople of greater depth, suffering and money “I’m afraid you are going to have to go.”
The rhyme fails to seat the hook, a design of sex and crime.
Pretty flowers bend but your deceased father and husband are hovering here. Your father’s omniscient reticence suffuses every word you speak. His wealth suspends you. You are dying shy waiting for things that never come to those who wait.
Your husband’s ghost is in your house suspended in every room watching his son and his wife. He likes the Squeak of death, of grief, and doom above the blonde wood, the expensive light and hills of Naples yellow Inclined sacred native graves. Sailing with the large brown ships of alcoholic, heavy-handed Don The neighbor’s pool, so sparely swum, so splash, so rich.
The dogs are strange, too big, too swank. Register and show, Send the children to Arizona for anthropology camp. Generosity radiates entitlement. As long as we’re giving, nothing gets in alive. At fourteen when girls go south to stretch and snap away from mom and father-dominus,
where were you? And at twenty, when parents dissolve and minds blossom did you forget to rebel?
Triangulated by three men, by two ghosts and boy-cypher who knows all and calls lots of shots, not as many as an infant but more than most. Fatherspawn within the web of your legs at center, still and steadying the strands waiting for a simple conversation.
The rich so thin they drip in their dawn jog, middle-aged stupor staring and smiling stupidly at the smashed deer still steaming and bleeding in the morning road. Two blondes near fifty too embarrassed at the utter violence and those dopey smiles Those dogs again
The rapist oh, therapist who sympathized profoundly with angst and attention
as your fortune loomed over your head like a giant bag of packing bubbles. He ruminated and speculated and cogitated and watched the residue on his walls You flowed with measure and depth. He listened - you paid, he listened - you paid So easy to be sympathize.
The chex, the chex, the chex, the sex, the rice, your honeymoon so nice. Troubled sleep in double bed and snoring soft and listen waking twenty five times a night and wonder about cold air, the deep game beyond describing playing out all innocence of course who knows your inner child, your secret sharer, your silent snow His dark and vaporous Virginia love for little girls.
Just one is not enough but you are the last of five at Christmastime. It’s you, it’s me, we’re five, now six and endless seven. Love comes dripping down from heaven one cold drop flows down my skin to my toes and shines inside the hole. Then eight and nine we stay in line with just enough to spare the cat from falling.
So where’s my woman in this crowded house bent from carrying her obedience. It is too crowded for me. Too many ghosts. Too many things beyond speaking. The part of me that calls the shots says run! They’re bigger than the both of us. *