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Nihilism for the Modern Homemaker

I am pretty much nihilistic;
tea never stays hot once poured,
and its steam causes the ceiling to mold.
The maintenance of metaphors is tiresome;
why do laundry when clothes only get dirty again?
The same could be said of myself I think.
What point is there to bathing a boy who runs away
for the purpose of getting filthy again?
I live for others to exact labor on me;
the dishes pile up in the sink, the husband has affairs,
baking soda and vinegar never get another woman out
of the laundry that runs away to a sordid motel room,
and no detergent cuts the grease, the smoke, the smell of my boy
coming home late; sometimes bile and blood never wash out.
The labor they exact on me is hard; my hands are scabbed and dry;
but why do I work anyway?
I can sweep, but the dust will fall in the same pattern, halos and wings
making rings where I lay as a child.
I can mop, but the mud and caked dirt and broken dishes will come back the next day.
I can bandage my finger, but next meal will cut me apart again,
tear me up into little bitty pieces and throw me down the drain.
But the labor I exact on myself is worse: it is the hard work of dreaming
and it drives me mad.

You say there was this bad time, during the war.

“During the war.” Am I expected to know what that means?

To me the war was a time where I had plastic toys,

danced them in sardine tins,

and then cried at night on the carpet, not because I was sad,

and not because I chose the carpet to cry on,

but only because I was a baby, and we cry a lot, wherever we can.

The war looks like those silly signs you make at me through the window.

Except, from what I know about war,

the window would be smeared in blood and you would make toothless signs

with a blown out shell of a head.

Everything I know about war comes from sardine tins,

and war bond advertising on Saturday morning cartoons.

Gosh I hate sardines, but they’re good for me,

and you make me eat them.

You say when Dad went away,

that was during the war,

that was a bad time,

and all those are empty to me. Sort of like the ugly socks grandmother bought me, and I never ever wear.

I’m a boy and I don’t like elephants or pink things.

And I don’t like sardines.

But you said Dad was a no-good rascal,

and that the house smiles so wide it creaks now that he’s gone,

which I guess explains why everything is falling apart,

why you never make sandwiches any more,

why the roof leaks and rats are everywhere,

and why,

when you think I’m not listening,

you complain to the insurance agent that things have gone to Hell in a handbasket.

That still doesn’t explain why the Devil does groceries dressed like a girl.

Apostrophe at 1 a.m.

Night,

fuck you!

You’re a slimy whore, fuck you!
You are never a good night.

You never come and make me want sleep. I have never seen the sun go down and thought rest. Always has the sun set, and I’ve thought of roadsides, no traffic, and raccoons. So leave off, Night, and stay your coming, at least until morning.

So fuck you,

promiscuous!

The filtered light, the sleight, the brush you have at th’hour of disaster, so fuck off.

If you’re so hungry, feed yourself!

You feed yourself; you grow wanton things in smarmy fields, at night. It’s sick how you grow teeth to lie through. Grow, reap, bake. I’m your wheat taken my seed taken grown in moon taken from feeding streams taken, scythed, taken,

crushed

rolled

kneaded my palms, taken off,

baked off,

fuck off you refuse to.

A culinary whore, a mind of stars, purpleeyedwhereslothbityour right check and drew no blood.

Hey, Night,

you’re a bastard child and loveless to boot.

Fuck, Night, you make me want you.

Yellow roadsides with no traffic and a deer someone hit and dragged over to the grass

I am not chained Night, I don’t have to itch my eyes at night. Tonight like all nights, I’ve gone to you, Night.

Why make me do it?

Why give me a rusted saw to fix my own escape?

Drift me down to the people who dance in you,

Make me alone! I want to dance with them,

FUCK NIGHT. SLUTTISH TIME,

And I want your rosy cousin;

your pallor makes me apprehensive;

your sounds are reticent, so you are a chamber

where my sounds echo, my joys louder, woes rebounding.

Night, go soft away, please!

Silver lights tattooing my fleshly cosmos, away!

Bring the sun, bring her shy graffiti through the curtain,

let her play.

I try tapping in cut-time, and then cauterizing it,

like tossing a bus off a bridge full of people at 9 a.m.

making a little splash in the bay, and

some rusty buoy rocks out the tale a few miles off. 

tossed at 9, precipitated downwards,

at 9 a.m.

that’s such a nice and wholesome hour

9 a.m.

Nine people shoved in a corner. It’s 1 a.m. down the alley and very yellow on the bricks. Finches lark out of the shadows, rats, cats, submariney sounds in the plumbing. Scrabbles, boinks,

drip

drip

I’m speaking and you can’t hear me.

Wildly I have flung blessings at the night and the trees in stands there; and blindly did I dispose of the blessings received of warm people in favor with wet teeth drooling of the blessings that never did come out of the unthoughtful night.

they also serve

I stood in the room with only a telephone,
and I have never been more expectant in my life.
I didn't want it to ring, really,
but never have I expected something more:
never crouched in the woods, expecting the police,
never went sailing and expected fair weather,
never expected the Yankees would lose;
never expected to be called in to work,
and never expected a raise (God, never);
never trudged home expecting a good dinner,
never expected Mother's stern disapproval;
never sat by a deathbed and expected a goodbye,
never expected blood to feel so hot;
never forgot what I expected I would remember,
but never did I expect to remember anything in the first place,
like how I never expected to remember my school days,
or expect a "please,"
or expect that one day behind the old rusty fence where the road changed to grass,
and never have I expected that surly L-word after a really long kiss;
but let's be honest, I never expected that kiss to happen,
and never expected that word to be said through gritted teeth;
and I never expected those stains would actually come out,
and I never expected I'd miss them;
I never expected the sun not to rise,
never expected lokcjwa,
and I never expected to live for quite a long time;
but it's funny

mild yokes, 1?

Milton, if you were not Milton, bless you,
you'd be as beastly as any brainless ox,
hitched to any old ricket of a plow,
and joyless would you heave it down
long and lonely cabbage rows;
or turn, and thickly plod with heavy hoof
through the ruddy beetroots, and pass invisibly
by them; if by chance working them up
from the dirt, and seeing their frowning beards,
you'd have to trod bullish on, and leave them lay.
I say, a toady for the farmhand you'd be,
and on your sluggier days you'd get a good licking!
Enough to set some speed on you,
trudging down those cabbage rows.