Three Found Poems on a Friday that Feels Good

I can almost hear the musician Chuck Mangione play "Feels So Good" as I serendipitously stumble on a link that brings me to a website that carries three poems written over the last few years.

And the word "serendipity" does have a nice ring to it apart from it being the name of a coffee chain that began in New York City and where Andy Warhol used to settle his food bills with sketches.

Gee. Thanks for the force guiding these old hands to serendipitous locations like http://wompherence.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=fip&action=display&thread=652

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Open Letter of Resignation from Housewifery

i can't come down in a low-cut peignoir
on a sunday, wallace stevens notwithstanding.
instead, i flounce around in this loose
violet housedress printed with
yellow orange, emerald & tangerine triangles
you bought from me in far zamboanga.

with effort i whip up a spanish omelette
for your breakfast but before i serve
the dish, how i wish for a magician
to replace me, one who with a theatrical wave
of her hand can transform the greasy stove & kitchen
counters into a showcase worth of ethan allen

i burn unintentionally the sausages from lucban, quezon,
the ones you have been looking forward to eating at dinner
you rage rage rage at my undying clumsiness
& the absent-minded air i wear all day
i blame my clogged nose & having mistaken
the smoke for monsoon mist slipping through the windows

in college my one big ambition
was not to turn into a stay-at-home wife.
the law of bad karma has caught up
with me apparently that i must learn, relearn
lessons on servitude & humility.

all i now know is
at the merest wisp of a chance
i shall stand surefooted once more
on the workforce's flat terrain
far from the mountain gorges
that i thought i loved.

_______________

Miranda Far and Near
For my youngest daughter

my skinny satin doll,
my faint moonbeam,
the struggling thing impatient to be born
i could have named you Anastasia
after the Russian imperial princess
whose docu-drama i was watching
the night the quick contractions came

you arrived squealing like a piglet,
angered by the bright, unforgiving
lights of the delivery room
since then by my chest you slept
suckled when hungry
threw up when full
cried loud enough to rouse the neighbors
until wearily i handed you over to my mother
& she crooned "que sera sera" to your ears

never one to leave you, dear one, to chance
on your sixteenth year i entrust
you to your grandmother & aunts
they tell me of your swinging moods
your pouting mouth
your finicky appetite
how upset you can get over a zit

but nothing prepares us for that day
on your twentieth year when pain blooms
like a poisoned flower in your right breast
a tumor is the doctor's prognosis
what has befallen my grown Barbie
whose simple joy it is to shop at the Top Shop?
before i can point an accusing finger
at an unheeding universe
i decide soberly, yes, doctor
let's have it out two days from now

having lost faith in rote prayers
i turn to my mother while her fingers
run through decades of a rosary
my impious eyes gaze at a friend who looks heavenward
my youngest born comes out
of the fog of anesthesia dizzy, wobbly,
nauseated, begging to be returned
to the operating table so she can
curl up to sleep some more
the surgeon describes the tumor's size
the unexpected pus pouring out of the breast
i wonder what toxin has touched her
has slipped through our cordon of protection

for close to a week i rise at midnight
& daybreak to bring you a glass of water
& an antibiotic
you tell me you have no memory
of getting up at those hours
can it be that the angel i taught you
to pray to as a child puts you back
to sleep & draws up the light blanket
of forgetfulness?

what can i tell you now, my grown doll,
my full moon with the wounded breast?
non-malignant means free of cancer
you can now traipse in Boracay in your two-piece
you can find and fall for the love of your life
& together have an adventure in Tawi-Tawi,
Uzbekistan or outer Mongolia
you can bear, breastfeed a child, baptize it Anastasia
pain will not entirely disappear
but until then i want to whisper
like a prayer
"what will be will be."
_____________

Performing Chopin

let me run my weathered fingers
down & up your spine
the way the hands of Cecile Licad
spiral down the keyboard
to Etude No. 12 in C Minor

let me do it the way she does
con brio & with so much vim
one gasps at the sheer force
of poetry coursing through her veins

how can you lie silently on your belly?
do you not hear me thundering
allegro con fuoco on the bones
fanning out of your back?

you turn your face from the depths of the pillow
nudge me to turn off the CD player
i wring my hands worriedly, say sotto voce,
"sorry, my sweet, but the Russians have overrun Poland."

'If I Should Have a Daughter' by Sarah Kay

This blogger is dedicating this repost to all those who've borne and raised children, no matter how clumsily, all those who are about to bear children, all those who have known pain inflicted by partners and other people, "the other people" that Jean-Paul Sartre referred to when he said there is no hell because hell is, well, other people.

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If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she’s gonna call me Point B. Because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me.

And I’m going to paint the solar systems on the backs of her hands, so she has to learn the entire Universe before she can say, “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach, but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself.

'Cause no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal, believe me, I’ve tried.

"And baby", I'll tell her, "don't keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke, so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him, or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him".

But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix. Okay. There’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix, but that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it.

I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the Galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my Mom taught me that there'll be days like this...

"There'll be days like this" my Mama said, when you open your hands to catch, and wind up with only blisters and bruises, when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly, and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape, when your boots will fill with rain and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment, and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank you".

'Cause there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.

You will put the win in win some, lose some, you will put the star in starting over, and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called Life.

And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive, but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar, it can crumble so easily, but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

"Baby" I'll tell her "remember your Mama is a Warrior, and your Papa is a Warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes, who never stops asking for more.

Remember that good things come in threes, and so do bad things, and always apologize when you've done something wrong, but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.

Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing, and when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door, and offer you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your Mother.

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter.html