Second Childhood (3 page)

like sea-creatures that others would eat

without them I have no purpose.

As in the Gospel account, I believed in their belief.

But now there would be what? For he, the little one,

was kneeling and saying, You must run.

The lover I still loved stayed near the door

so I raced off, you stood, when the police came

seeking coherence in everything.

The total machine of retribution presses on.

Regardless of a prayer or what a person did.

This is incredible.

We’re breaking up.

A Trappist led me around as one of him

to a ship heading for the country where they edit the best films.

There was a city on deck: residential with pleasing evening trees

and then a downtown area until we couldn’t tell the suns

from the portholes on board.

The ship would transport us to a staging dock in Iona.

I would lose my luggage from the twentieth century

(though its particles and buckles were forged in eternity)

and make my private vows to the creator

in every theater we entered.

Together we traveled in a boat as it filled with night-water

from the bottom up.

By night-water one means fear.

So the refilling is adding a sting to the salt.

Living naked

still leaves you covered

by a surface of wood, feathers, fur or skin.

Bare skin, blue skin: a muff of lambskin

over the ears where the thief can get in.

It’s lucky the mind freezes before the heart.

Back there is the string of mountains your uncle painted

and you lost. Out there is the clotted cream

on a raspberry tart that he couldn’t finish.

There is the goose and the blackbird, the brindled donkey

and the trap. They stand on the thin black thread of your lineage.

Your scissors are split, your fiddle is cracked, its strings are thin

and your mouth is dry, your clothes American.

No more rush of notes as if a window is open inside.

Only if you are insane or asleep

and the gods and animals

pound their way in

on a divine night wind.

I have a fairy rosary called Silver who answers questions when I dangle her in the sun at the window.

So I’ve asked her if I have a big ego and she swings from side to side to say no.

We have other children for friends.

We don’t understand why we are here in the world with horrible grown-ups or what the lessons are that we’re supposed to learn.

It’s not helpful for us to hear ourselves described in religious, geriatric or psychological terms, because we don’t remember what they mean.

One cruel female said, “Don’t laugh so much. You’re not a child.”

My cheeks burned and my eyes grew hot.

I decided to stop becoming an adult. That day I chose to blur facts, fail at tests, and slouch under a hood.

School was my first testing ground. I misunderstood lessons, assignments, meanings of poems and stories, and misinterpreted the gestures of characters in novels. I was awestruck by geology but mixed up the ages of rocks. I stared and giggled, and refused to take orders and was punished.

Throughout my life I have remained vague and have accepted the humiliation it brought, almost as if stupefaction were a gift. I willfully repeat my mistakes over and over and never learn from experience.

Every day has been a threat to this attitude so I avoid obligations.

For example, last night I dreamed I was on an airplane that was open to the sky and a storm was coming from a hive of stars, and I wanted to sit beside my daughter to watch the wind as we strapped ourselves tight to the invisible seats and stayed awake in the air.

If we had been grown-ups, we wouldn’t have been able to see the stars or the storm. We would have perished.

So my commitment to childhood has once again been affirmed.

Read the signs, not the authorities.

You might think I am just old but I have finally decided to make the decision to never grow up, and remain under my hood.

We are like tiny egos inside a great mountain of air.

Pressed upon by the weight of ether, we can barely breathe.

One ego is like a spider clutched to a web of its own making.

It turns to enamel and hardens on fulfillment.

Many egos fill up the whole body, every part to the tiniest hair.

Some egos are like fingernails that have been stifled by brittle paint.

All egos have something impersonal about them. They live deep inside like viruses and unlike gods who play in outer air.

But this ego covered my face with spider-dust as I lay in my bassinet.

Today I keep seeing gauze of a crystal kind, another kind of web of a type that doesn’t harden but swings and shimmers.

It’s the web-hood of a lost spirit.

At birth a baby failure is unconscious of the shadow that covers her face: it’s from the success leaning over her crèche smudging out the color in her cheeks.

The failure is born to measure the shadow of success. This is the failure’s mission.

The secret hood around her face indicates her vocation.

The success arrives in triumph, and is instantly obsolescent, while the failures keep trying, failing and reproducing until another success is born. It could be centuries from their lifetime.

It’s NOT ironical but logical that the failure is the one who recognizes success and identifies its potential in her enemies.

She it is who keeps their egos alive with her tears.

She is their harshest critic, she who can separate the fraud from the living, the cold from the lukewarm.

She is still a failure, a tiny ego who can’t quite rise to the occasion of being. She is driven by longing.

And she has crazy rules: “If your whole body can’t breathe the air, your prayers are incomplete. No nail polish!”

I think the gods and goddesses were the last good grown-ups on earth. Once I saw them walking to a party along a beach and I could make out their shadows like a line of pines in an ocean breeze. They were laughing and calling to each other. Still they were always aware of their mortal children’s prayers and answered them, sometimes in the form of mist, sometimes with needles of sunlight.

The gods existed outside the ego-world though they were certainly jealous and angry. Now some of them are pots and pans and wax and marbles, balls and kettles, rope and puddles. They emit a crackling sound when lightning hits the ground, and give people shingles. Other gods have chosen to break out to heaven where they blend into pastel and ride comets once a year. Sometimes it’s hard to walk with so many gods bouncing around so I use a broom, rosary or cane to wave them away.

I have never arrived

into a new life yet.

Have you?

Do you find the squeak

of boots on snow

excruciating?

Have you heard people

say, It wasn’t me,

when they accomplished

a great feat?

I have, often.

But rarely.

Possibility

is one of the elements.

It keeps things going.

The ferry

with its ratty engine

and exactitude at chugging

into blocks and chains.

Returning as ever

to mother’s house

under a salty rain.

Slave up, slave down.

I want to leave this place

a postulant.

The gas stove is leaking

and the door of the refrigerator

stained with rust.

The mugs are ugly

and there are only two forks.

The walls are black

and soft, the bed a balloon

of night-clothing.

The stairwell sloped

to a dragger’s pace.

There are big windows

with blind-slats dusty

and gray. Street life

goes all night and at dawn

freedmen shout and

laugh outside the kitchen.

Where does life begin?

In the lamb or in its threads?

If a man is numb

beat him.

If mute, shout

Say my name!

If he’s still wearing

that coat, scream

Mercy, mercy!

and stroke it.

We drop the shadows where they are then

return to them

when the light has grown heavy.

You’ll take your time lugging the weight into our room

or stand over there in the shade.

We’ve never been too sure that we exist as the earth does.

We’re most at home in water

that soaks up the letters in our brains.

It could be we’ve been dry too long.

A spirit is a mess when excess spoils it.

I see them through the slats

and crack of the open window.

A cold rain. Leaves flipped

and palsied.

The river is brown near

the sand, loose banks and twigs

stick at the edge and a lilac’s

silhouette of a dog.

How in the dark hole can I hide

if I can’t get outside?

Then I won’t remember

what I did to deserve it.

That arch and bridge

will form a shape of repentance.

If I’m hanging,

then judgment has been passed.

And I am hanging

upside-down

head swinging towards the moon.

Years of inversion.

A face in a mirror displaced

by its position outside silver.

And so?

Next will come muscle,

a little grief but no shoulder.

You’re learning how to be a unit

with an infinite in its attic.

It’s not difficult.

Light is the last message.

Then white streaks like oil paint

are the first to appear along the wet railing.

The ghost was soaked

and swelled into a human being

so close to resurrection

I could see the genius

of institutional religion.

Examine your conscience

until you are a postulant

who has only one sin to offer God.

Soon you’ll wash that thing off

(scented by its parallel past) and pause.

What were your feet thinking in their hurry

to connect the parts?

Get the children to the other side!

What children? You were the one running.

There was never any other.

Now the sun is like a yolk that broke

into the corridor.

Sleepwalk through its gold

and you will see the original glitter

that lit our move to the lounge.

“I’m looking for a restaurant

with a baby spoon and knife.”

“May I consult my psychic?”

A long shadow will mean your back’s to the sun

and you can’t empty the space you occupy anymore

expecting to see another opening.

The moods of strangers

determine your day.

Will the driver be kind?

Please God let him be.

This is poverty, not just

second childhood

in a divided city.

But my thanks to the soul-heat