“12 Years Old,” “Can’t Google This,” and “To Hell With Black Friday”

She had a baby

only two weeks ago -

2 pounds, 6 sticks of butter, a sack of flour

a bowl of apples, a bag of caramel sugar

2 pounds of a girl.

 

She weeps into the bowl of her hands,

her breasts full, her womb a spent sack

her baby, no bigger than a pup…

 

Child, where does your heart fly while you sleep?

What colored sand do you eat and

what dreams do you sculpt from water?

 

How does such a tiny baby sound as she

swallows her mother’s sorrow –

what of the smallness inside such smallness,

what giant lies sleeping inside of you,

what deep oceans, what unfathomable nebulas

flash behind your translucent eyes?

 

And what does such a brief life feel like

as it passes through you, her name, her skin,

the one, two pulse/punch, faster than sound and

silence together...

 

and who was there to cup you in the palm

of their hands, child, to catch your pulse

as it left your body, and what solace did

you seek as they saw fit to drag you off to detention

hours after her limp body was pried from your hands?

 

Who caught and held you as you wept,

who lay beside you until you could fall asleep –

what tendrils of love and devotion can protect you

now in your cell, in your mourning, in the arc of light

that shines from the cathedral of your brain?

 

You tried to baptize yourself in toilet water and

as they dragged you away, you cried “Mama, Mamita”.

You have a good twin, the one your own mother chose over you.

She set the table precisely, kept her body covered,

and never raised her voice.

 

You, unbaptized until you were thrown in detention

with the mark of Cain on your forehead, charcoal in

your eyes, a leveler at your hips to gauge the sway

as you drew boys to you like metal shavings.

 

Your mother told lies to the court – she even

wore your clothes to the hearing, taunting you.

Beat you at six, locked the door and changed her number,

setting you on a circular journey from stranger to stranger.

 

And when you write about what happened, the

story tattooed in your womb where you can still feel

your baby afloat in the fluids of life,

you write:

                            “I love her because she is my mother”

Google can satisfy the itch to know, but not to taste red bean paste,

to disprove or prove, but not to feel tenderness.

It puts an electronic flea market at our fingertips, sends a puff

of crack-like enticement via hyper-links, and we follow, ghosted.

It cannot love like a man, cannot fill the house with aromas of

Indian curry, cannot grow cilantro in a pot.

It can reinforce why and who we hate, fan the flames of perversion,

lead a trail of blood and tears to the long ago vanquished,

But dreams do the same, and better as they swirl through sleep and

moments with lovers gently spooning nourishment to one another.

The slant of Venice light on your sleeping face, burnished toffee, no redwood

how your breath, caught, then released, fills me with wonder and terror

The sound of wild green parrots (once some artist’s pet, multiplied) wheeling through

palm trees as neighbors make dinner, sigh at another shooting, hug each other.

It can’t best that first sip of morning coffee or offer

a single instance of holy nothingness, its relentless need to

jangle and jingle, blink, bangle and bounce until

we rise, red-eyed and unsteadily go to bed having learned

a whole lot of facts that melt together like crayons

in an oven, but leave us scooped out and stupid with fatigue.

Give me a handful of buttered light, church light, small light

and watch how one house after another winks dark-

And the obsession to know is laid to rest finally because

not knowing is a state of grace. Suspension then

quiet in the absence of false knowledge, holding hands

under the covers, the way sunlight pours into darkness into

coffee filters into the smallest of angels dancing moth-like

where no one can see them. This is the blessed life.

You don’t need to know Mandarin to send a note

to Shanghai, and you don’t need to really

mean it when you flatter a woman

or flirt with a man, and there is no longer

any excuse for not staying in touch, even

if you have nothing to say to anyone.

I know less after 4 hours of web surfing than I did

after that walk in the rain to heal the wound you

left from your jagged knife –

where I found the first leaves of fall

stained glass –

Orion’s Nebula –

babies’ lungs –

And I am more starved for human contact after

following every single hyper link in Wikipedia

when I tried to find out more about you

(not famous enough for the Wiki folks),

but if I am still, I can recall the small

animal breath as you slept and

when I am with the world instead of rendered

zombie-like in front of the computer, I can see

the color of your eyes (amber, then chocolate at dusk).

And I can know on a primordial level the silence

of earth tones, the sweetness of underwater music and

the absolutely unarguable rightness of ice cream.

And though Apple has told me I need to upgrade

or become a fossil fit for the La Brea tar pits,

I’d rather practice tying a maraschino cherry stem

all day with my tongue, or photo-shopping

the heads of endangered species

onto the necks of CEOs. And though

I am urged to update and icloud and dropbox

and expand my gigabytes and trilobytes, and megapixels

because words with lots of syllables make me smart and powerful,

I choose to use my time in tactile communion with my dead

ancestors, to Ouji board them into existence, something

no super light, lean, sleek laptop could do for me, ever.

and so forgive me if I don’t forfeit my kid’s college tuition to

buy the most recent gadget that, according to the advert,

is as necessary as breathing, as loving, as touching.

I choose to use my time inhaling the colors of winter,

caressing the whiffs of hot scones bathed in butter,

losing myself in a good read instead of letting

them turn me upside down to shake out the last

penny I’ve earned to buy that which all the nimble

fingers in China cannot make last a lifetime.