Poem: The Prolonged Melancholy of My Mother

Mother, I sit next to an ugly man returning
guilt weary on the train from our slowly-
sinking dog-house. In the half-humbled
din of the passengers I hear the
invocations of twenty-seven years, tears,
spending yourself, looking into the future
for iron deeds and not necessarily gold,
tending the repeat wounds you believe were
salted. I would like you to see me as a son,
as I see you my child, delicate, red,
lonely in your own mind. This train speeds to
your desire, to stay hostile affection, and now
to my cyclic...sigh. Please do not cry on your
birthday, nor two nights before, because I
called you insane. Wait, as you say, this will pass.

You say that you pray, that I pray, that
I pray for you. Would you dance with me
in this car, tearing your wedding gown,
if I played you a song? Choose to hear me,
today wade cold above your theories, and
reply, vacant, 'alright.' The woman whose
calloused feet were washed by priests; who
swelled alive with slender limbs balanced,
ascending divine among V, wingéd V, to follow
the geese; who eventually wore a crown to issue
orders to an empty room, receive my signal:
The nightmares which you suffer from
grow in the words
nobody says nobody says,
and they're random like the lottery.
A general and a martyr, generous mother,
faultless and fierce, you've been a holy
angel on the highwire, but scared to death.
Please remember the ground is stable, your
children able, and that the lights are on, once
bruised but on. Know that this animal cage
around you will soften and expand, and
only for the brief remainder of the night must
you climb through the fog overhead
until now, when you wake again.

Rise from your bed, I command you, rise! From
now until we return to dust, golden ash, I lead your
grace, your soul, my mother, through the thousand
faces of paradise, an eternal vacation from your poverty
in sorrows. Today, I take you to Paris, morning
under the tower, where I tie up your slippers to watch
you bend over and around the sun from my egg in
the grass. At dawn we cruise North, Nova Scotia bound,
whalewatching, continental breakfast on the upper deck
where you are the most beautiful woman the captain says
he's ever seen. Beholden we early feed dolphins from
your brother's boat in the Everglades, and sunblocking
your shoulders I announce that I'm moving back home.
The air is hot here in Africa, where your body has ceased
to trouble you, and the bachelors persist, and they
are all reverent, doting, rich; Nevermind and
walk, I will let no one dishonor you today.
We bristle as the shops open in London...