Hamster and Wood, edit 5. No... 6.

Hamster and Wood

Spring they say. Season of Love
they say. A time for rebirth.
But all I see are tulips bob
and spew gold dust on windows.

Yep, it's that time again.

Spring cleaning time. Going to pick my way
through sagging boxes and empty popcorn tins
tucked in lonely attic corners between a tilted lamp stand
and the Nativity Jesus.
Time to coat my palms in gray film
until I stumble on our old hamster cage.

I remember you.

How we passed our honeymoon years
cheek-to-cheek peering through the dome-wire
slats. How we bought that hamster, called him
our foster child. Hoped his noise would fill
our hushed-up home-void. Countless hours
spent watching him throw his hamster head
into the wood chips. Sweep up
musty scraps of pine. Prick claws
through reddened cedar slices.
Looking for what? you asked.
The Great Beyond. I said.

But he was not the only one searching
for greatness. You, too,
dipped yourself in our marriage bed
until your skin swelled--a ripe seed
ready to burst.
Holed up in me, you sought a future
you never got. One that looked like toy cars,
T-ball games in the backyard. A beyond
that sounds like lips coaxing
the soft yawn in son. In me
you hid your silly things:
how daddy left you. How mommy
hates you. How I am the closest
you'll ever be to pure abandonment:
of sense, of fear, of self.

Because isn't that what union really is?
Coming together to give up you in
me. To piece together. Like hamster and wood.
Woman and man.
To make one. A tiny-fingered one
that dwells so deep inside you,
you can't stop digging to find him.
You racked your mind to such a frenzy that most nights
you begged for me to hold you. Wrap my arms
like fragmented trees stroking the shudder
of your hamster soul to calming

while our own false child in his wire cage
kept me up so many fruitless nights that sometimes
I would scoop him up too, hold his twitching
body in my palm and watch my silent presence
limp him. Was I too short-sighted? You knew
that while I thought I was cooling his unease,
that stopping him (like stopping you) meant new
beginnings. A start to things
like empty beds, lonesome attics,
and your overwhelming need.
And it was that need that would one day
leave our cages empty. Your urge
that would take you out to find
no longer my arms, but the fertile
grass not in my barren wood chips.

Cummings Improv (3rd draft) Hamster and Wood

Hamster and Wood

Sagging flowers blob on trees and spew

gold film on my windows.
Yes, it's that time again.

Time to pick my way through packed
boxes and dusty sacks from winter,
shuffling on hands and knees

across the creaking attic beams
where I find our old hamster cage.

How many times did we spend

our honeymoon years pressed cheek to cheek

 to peer through its metallic slats?
Sworn to our devotion for our false child

we spent hours watching our hamster 

throw his head into the wood,
sweeping musty scraps of pine upward,

pricking claws through cedar slices,

searching for, what I joked, was the Great Beyond.
 

Our voyeur-days spent cuddling and scoping
the bulging bead of his hamster eye, gemming
like the spotlight of a boutique window, seeing

dirt, seeing dust and opportunity.

He’d find jagged scraps of hope down there.

A plastic glare against his eye.

So that right before the dive

his eyelid curtained down to wrap
whatever present sight had given him.

Reminds me of sex.

How, so much like a hamster, you
dipped yourself until your skin
burned and chafed like a swollen arial.
Holed up--seeking the familiar,
hoping to hide angsty bruises.
(How daddy left you. How mommy
hates you.) How I am the closest

you'll ever be to pure abandonment--
of sense, of fear, of self.

Acknowledge "union"
for what it really is.
Giving up you in me
and piecing together like
hamster and wood.

Slipping with rodent quickness, slamming
inside fragmented trees,
hoping arms will reach out and stroke
the shudder of your hamster soul to calming.

Sometimes, tired of watching our pet burrow
I used to reach into the cage, scoop him out,

and hold him. 

Press the anxious wiggle of his nose to mine,

until with silent relief,

I'd watch my presence limp him against my thumb.

For me, his ceaseless digging
meant restlessness. Unease.

I wish I realized then that stopping him
(stopping you) meant finally having to face 

the need to find

some grass beyond these wood chips.

Cummings Improv Part II (Edit)

Eff, this is long. Still haven't titled it yet.

Outside, pink blobs sagging on trees

spew yellow film on my windows.
It's that time again.

Time to pick my way through packed
boxes and dusty sacks from winter;
shuffling on hands and knees
through the creaking attic's back,
I find our old hamster cage.

How many times did we press cheeks
together to peer through its metallic slats,
watching the hamster throw his head
into the wood chips?
Sweeping musty scraps of pine upward,
pricking his clawed fingers into cedar slices.
Voyeurs, we'd cuddle close and scope
the bulging bead of his eye gem
like the spotlight of a boutique window.

We’d sit and marvel at his plump insides

until his lids curtained down to wrap
itself off in preparation of the dive.

Reminds me of sex.

How, so much like a hamster, you
dipped yourself until your skin
burned and chafed like a swollen arial.
You holed up.
Perhaps seeking the familiar.
Perhaps hoping to hide angsty bruises
(How daddy left you. How mommy
hates you. How I am
the closest you'll ever be
to pure abandonment--
of sense, of fear, of self).

Whether that means leaving the man
you never wanted to know behind
or to acknowledge the word "union"
for what it really is. Becoming one.
Giving up you for me
and piecing together like
key and lock. Woman and man.
Hamster and wood.

Slipping with rodent quickness, slamming
inside the fragmented trees,
hoping arms will reach out and stroke
the shudder of your hamster soul to calming.

Sometimes, tired of watching our pet
burrow into the wood I reached
into the cage, scooped him out,
held him in my hands and pressed
the anxious wiggle of his nose to mine.
With silent relief I'd watch
my gentle presence drain him, limp him
against my thumb. For me, his ceaseless
digging meant restlessness. Unease.

But for you, stopping the hamster
(stopping you), meant having to face
the unmoving evidence
of your shame. 

I had a brush-in with e.e. cummings "she being brand" in my Grammar class last week. I became obsessed to try something new following the notion of trying to sexualize something unsexual? Whatever. First attempt. Very rough draft.

These days my favorite hamster drifts awall,
though his bark-laden cage is still here.
So many times we watched that hamster throw
his head into the wood, splaying
musty scraps of pine and pricking prodding
fingers down into the cedar slices. Voyeur-like
we noticed how the bulging bead of his eye
would close around itself before diving                                  in and out
in and out of the dangerous.

Why did he dip himself in raw temptation?
His skin burned and chafed like a ripe and swollen
aril, and I, scraped and sighed finality.
Still he weasled on. Perhaps to hole up
in the familiar. Perhaps to hide the seeping bruises
of his adolescent recall. Did daddy damage him
the day he disappeared? Or was it when his mom
threw him out? Let him sleep curbside.
Maybe all he was really hiding
was the truth that I'm the closest he'll ever be
to pure abandonment.
Of sense. Of fear. Of self.

Whatever it was, with rodent quickness, his s l i p p i n g
body burrowed into fragmented trees,
waiting for the branches to reach out and wrap
its tired arms around the shudder of his (s__)*,
so that the moment when his little hamster life went limp,
drained from the ability to rise, I could not
disguise my silent relief, but you,
my darling, could not break eyes
from the absent, unmoving evidence
of your shame. 

*I hate to put the word "soul" here. I am striving for some particular word, I just don't know what it is yet.

Edit II

The Definition of Enlightenment

On a blind date, we are expected
to learn each other--to talk,
heavy humming, syllabic drumming--
a discourse that soon beats out
to silence. My eyes glaze.

The cold pizza we’re splitting the bill
for is cratered from my fingertips, tomato
sauce glazing the inside of my nails.
We are fading, so to break the hush
I tell you, you are enlightening.

Enlightenment. Defined as a greater
knowledge. A deeper understanding.
Your first name, for instance,
which I think I know starts
with a T. Or the Age

of Enlightenment, the return to reason,
a period sprouting penny academies
in coffee houses for those who want
drinks with their substantial conversation.
And here we settle for cheese and marinara.

I don’t want to know you. I can’t stand
the great plains, the bended folds, our kindred
elbows making solid shadows that touch
and feel each other on the white veneer
table top. Together we whitewash color,
we are matching shades of gray. We defy
whatever light pushes out against our palms
from the weak-willed pulsing of fluorescent
lights. I move my hand from the table.

We are all in light. We need it, need knowledge,
need it to enlighten, to shed the glassy rays
of fractured bridges made of water’s edge,
fashioned like the glares of compact mirrors.
In light, our eyes glaze and glow, we must make
light of ourselves. To make light means

to lighten our load, means to remove
the burden of ourselves, slough it off
like darkness. It is the darkness in ourselves
that smears a long trail behind us, cast
on stucco walls to loom, mere shadows
ignored. To rest on scratched table tops
reaching out to some off-limit area.
The less I know of you, the more in light we are.

Do not show me your darkness. I don’t want
to know you killed your mother who still lives
in some one story ranch house in Texas, can’t know
you witnessed a crime you never saw, won’t stand
to know you pick your toenails with your teeth
and spit the salty bits into a dirty ash tray,
because they say the more you know, the farther
from innocence you are--there is no going back
from knowing you. I choose the you now, the stranger
hunched over in a plastic chair, studying
the whiskers on your lower arm. I don’t want
your dimensions to change. For you to become
full, and colored. To take on shades and move
out from this long breath held around us, this paper
bubble, flimsy and ready to combust, this glow,
these bland slices of rubbery pizza, this silent date,
like some long trial leading to basic enlightenment.

Edit

Invitations

Your sister's wedding picture is here.

Reminds me of a man I never met:

Your uncle, an anthropologist
in Africa. The one that likes his men
tall, slim, and dark-skinned.

The one you told me all about,

as if he were the punch line

of some joke beginning with

your mother, one of her several brothers.

He is the man your family mentions

in brevity, at the dinner table,

eyes rolling and lips pressing to smirks.

I wonder if your uncle got a wedding
invitation. The letter you did not send him,

not wondering how he branched so far--
You remind me of small-time slave holders.

Masters who could only afford a few

knew what they had was special:

clothed them, fed them, allowed them

the warmth of their homes, the warmth

in your home. My frequent visits 

to see you, peppered with moments

with your parents, watching cake shows

in your soccer shorts, cross-stitching.

One time, your mother told me, in high school,
one of her older brothers picketed blacks

from entering the school. She knew

it was wrong but these things were so natural,

so every day and somehow she knew,

seeing me, kissing you,

that maybe she wanted that
strangeness to be blocked out too. 

It’s only natural. No matter

the time spent baking cookies together,
picking scraps for quilts, nothing

so strange to deny their blue-eyed son
from dating a little black girl.

They say, the small slaveholders
loved the individual. It was the black

masses they feared and loathed,
like something strange. Some oddity,

some stirring conversation piece

like uncles out in Africa pursuing

black men in the Serengeti.
I imagine us, your uncle and I, sitting,
hovered up in the back corner of some

hardened pew, watching, chins up,

blurry-eyed and accepting,  being there

for your sister without ever needing

your permission or your invitation.