Being Women Together

Being Women Together

My mother and I were women together.  Well, okay, I was only her girl child for some of those years, but I quite precociously grasped one evening when I heard the plentiful and ebullient family next door having a barbecue that lasted roughly from noon until midnight the summer of my eleventh year the disquieting contrast between those noises and smells and the quiet dusk of our own kitchen.

“I’m lonely.  I want more,” my sullen gaze telegraphed itself into her awareness.

“I understand, one hundred percent” the squeeze she gave my hand – two short squeezes and a long one that felt particularly sincere and protective – transmitted.

So – this was womanhood, was our own version of womanhood anyway – a cloud of dissatisfaction palpable as a self-separate entity, a runty bunny rabbit, white with those gruesome red eyes.

The dead of L.A.

(I found one of my mom's old notebooks from the eighties.  her handwriting is atrocious but I'm transcribing her poetry)

************

Pinched and twisted

In the dead of L.A. –

Lost and more lost, she wanders,

Not one word exchanged or offered-

Bury and buy

Again + again

He exits

Dripping gold

Silent and dripping indifference

Peripheral vision

Revealed him

Not to her. 

Sheer wonder in

Compromise .

He’s glowing rays

Of hate, death.

Could his meaning have been

Tender curiousity?

The air is cool

The sky is late

The sidewalks are covered in

Pages from desk calendars

You (we) tread over days and days

Of last year

In which something happened – something –

Lived and died –

Putting me in a bleak park –

Another lost day and dead years

And dear but dead l.a.

December 28 1989

Hole, a poem

Hole

Guys always tell me they sold Frances Bean her first drugs

and guys always tell me they're really not that into hugs

and guys always say that poor Frances Bean was so sweet

and guys always make me feel like a raw piece of meat.

do these stories meet in the middle?

she was little,

I was little.

She has a hole and her mother does too

and so did my mom, but it just made her blue.

Favorite Poet #2 - Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971

Died of a brain tumor

A House of Mercy

It was a house of female habitation,
Two ladies fair inhabited the house,
And they were brave. For although Fear knocked loud
Upon the door, and said he must come in,
They did not let him in.

There were also two feeble babes, two girls,
That Mrs. S. had by her husband had,
He soon left them and went away to sea,
Nor sent them money, nor came home again
Except to borrow back
Her Naval Officer's Wife's Allowance from Mrs. S.
Who gave it him at once, she thought she should.

There was also the ladies' aunt
And babes' great aunt, a Mrs Martha Hearn Clode,
And she was elderly.
These ladies put their money all together
And so we lived.

I was the younger of the feeble babes
And when I was a child my mother died
And later Great Aunt Martha Hearn Clode died
And later still my sister went away.

Now I am old I tend my mother's sister
The noble aunt who so long tended us,
Faithful and True her name is. Tranquil.
Also Sardonic. And I tend the house.

It is a house of female habitation
A house expecting strength as it is strong
A house of aristocratic mould that looks apart
When tears fall; counts despair
Derisory. Yet it has kept us well. For all its faults.
If they are faults, of sternness and reserve,
It is a Being of warmth I think; at heart
A house of mercy.

The Reason

My life is vile
I hate it so
I'll wait awhile
And then I'll go.

Why wait at all?
Hope springs alive,
Good may befall
I yet may thrive.

It is because I can't make up my mind
If God is good, impotent or unkind.

Stevie Smith Recites "Not Waving but Drowning"
           

WEEK of FAVORITE POETS: #1 - Dorothy Parker

        

Resumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

---

Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom read by Ms. Parker

Symptom Recital -- scene from the movie Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle starring Jennifer Jason Leigh

The Nostalgia Principle of Time Travel - Poem

The Nostalgic principle of Time Travel on this the Anniversary of the Murder of John Lennon

Firstly, would Darby Crash be a household name instead of just the homophobic homo nihilist punk who killed himself to be famous but

had the sad luck to do

it the night before we found out about John Lennon?

It wasn't much of a splash he made, his suicide,

and now he haunts this old roachy hot dog stand in Hollywood

where he spent some happy -- for a nihilist -- nights with his

fans and friends.  His old ghost bones give him pains.

Secondly, and more importantly, 

if John Lennon hadn't,'a been murdered when he was

would mom have visited dad more in the hospital

instead of drooling glued to the tv for all the details of

her mania-man, that effortlessly cool guy, John Lennon?

Dad was in the hospital recovering from heart surgery and

oh gee wiz, if John Lennon wouldn't have been shot like that when he was,

would they have stayed together, at least for a couple years more?

would she've drinken so much and

would she have exuded that air of an absolute distaste

for the concept of culpability that, in real life, she exuded,

all brownish-gray and a-swirl with the dingy smoke from her 

endless cigarette?

In other words, 

would I be the sweet, sweat-smelling ragdoll,

woman of the hungry mouth and the near-hopeless cunt

you see before you today?

Would life be better for me if John Lennon wasn't murdered that day

and if Kurt Cobain hadn't kicked the bucket would I

care more than I do about anything less than the MOST OF ANYTHING?

OUR LAST TEXTS, ILLUSTRATED

The texts in black are Mom and the pink ones are Me.
The last one is from her pastor when he was trying to reach me to tell me she'd passed away earlier that morning.
The pictures are of some of her favorite things.