the alcoholic whore bit

I could have been an alcoholic or a drug addict... I could have taken up sex for hire... I am sort of entitled, I figure, but instead I had children, many of them, and I loved them too well, by which I mean I loved them co-dependently, whatever that means, I will find out what that means and why I can feel so much resentment and yes, even hatred and 'desprecio,' why most things I try to do are rejected; why they never came to hear me play (with the exception of two of them, but that was to specific shows rather than to my regular gigs). I know for a fact that I overdid, that I tried too hard, as a child, to be the best, hoping for some acceptance, nice words, a bit of applause from my mother and the accountant. High school: magna cum laude. My mother went on vacation to Europe and did not come. College: magna cum laude; I don't know the reason she did not come to that. Law school: too far away? I don't know.

Would it have been more acceptable to have been an alcoholic whore? Would they have come, applauded, laughed, cut me a break? Maybe the shadow knows...


Ah...

i am in constant mourning for everyone
the fridge hums a dirge all day
the photos of the deceased
stare from the page hopelessly

Natvarili
Is it the passing of the years?
The newest wrinkle on my neck?
Is it the first gray strand
in my son's hair?

Most days I am content
with line and yeasty bread,
with tree and snowy fields
and honey in my chamomile.

But then there are these moments
when the black hole that is life,
(or is it death?) yawns hugely,
clacks yellowed teeth, whistles

a syncopated requiem; I always mean
to write out in those moments how
my farewells are to be said; the music
(Ella Fitzgerald, Satchmo, Benny Moré)

for the dancing at the head of the cortge,
the later slower strains (Concerto for Mandolin,
Vivaldi, and some of Enya, or dark strains
of Piazzolla) for meditation on the taste

of life and death; I always get distracted,
will probably miss my funeral, pyre
will burn without me, my children having paid
for funeral meats, champagne and cha-cha-chá

will wonder how it is again that I am late...
and yet I mourn the touch of Larry's hand
upon my cheek and his caressing voice
(I'd call his office just to listen to the message

on his voicemail), I mourn the lack of seas
that I may never see again, my tropical
bluegreen with white spun sugar sand,
I mourn now dead illusions,

misconceptions, the restaurants
that failed, the men I loved whose names
escape me, the feel of baby bottoms
after diapers had been changed...

At sixteen I wore melancholy on my face;
at fifty-four remember sixteen's eyes
and think how much time wasted...
Time out for chamomile and honey,

for fresh-baked bread with butter,
for old Neruda lines and taste of kisses
in this melancholy brain, and pleasant dreams
and planetary turnings for the day

may bring rejoicings or calamities,
with hey ho, wind and rain.

POST SCRIPT: which means, not necessarily an afterthought, but something after it was all written. On the last visit, after I drove all day on my birthday to be there for the birth of the baby, I came to visit just before leaving, I offered to make soup and the partner yelled and opened the door to the freezer to show me how much of the food I had made while she was pregnant was still there, frozen away, uneaten. This followed my oldest's email request that I NOT cook anything if I visited... This is called co-dependent cooking. I will cook no more, hopefully, there, although I made paella for my wedding, and everyone ate it and had second and third helpings.