Some Thoughts on My Own Writing

Born out of oppression
is a kind of poetic confession
that I cannot recreate
but resonates in my head.
My suicide idol, beautifully depressed,
my attempts pale and my words fail to impress.
Still...
I am slave to these thoughts,
annoyingly chained to my ordinary pen.
Every now and then
a tiny miracle bleeds through the ink.
But mainly I'm just scribbling out useless
and angst-ridden poems--
the kind born out of teenaged girls
who pass notes in the hall.

The Irony of Mothers and Daughters

My mother left me young,
in the dark. In not
much of a nest, my
child-heart searching to get back
to her forgetting arms.
My mother was the hollow-huntress,
starving for a love no child can give.
She took from me what she longed for.
Stole it back--
during the million nights of cold and black
that were my childhood--
her own girlish needs in mind,
not mine.
For years her "Poor Me" shrine
kept my wolves away.

Birth of My Daughter

Paralyzed in death-like light
I'm as helpless as a mental patient.
A fat sack, weighted and tied
by my feet like a twenty-year old ragdoll.
They all chant: "You can do it!"
They don't mean it.
To them I'm nothing more than a number.
My mother who wasn't a mother at all
leaves me with a pack of anonymous nurses.
I escape to the ceiling tiles,
floating through patterns above my pain,
waiting to hear that I'm alive,
that I can come back down again.
The sharp break of a child's cry
wakes me from a near-death dream.
My baby and me among
the busy-bee doctors, stitching
and washing with concentrated urgency,
are safe and quiet now.
Our eyes say, "Yes, I know you."
We take comfort in
our mutual helplessness.