My Idea Of Hell Is To Be

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.

I Will Choose What Enters Me, What Becomes Flesh Of My Flesh. Without Choice, No Politics, No Ethics Lives. I Am Not Your Cornfield, Not Your Uranium Mine, Not Your Calf For Fattening, Not Your Cow For Milking. You May Not Use Me As Your Factory. Priests And Legislators Do Not Hold Shares In My Womb Or My Mind. If I Give It To You, I Want It Back. My Life Is A Non-negotiable Demand.

Nobody Can Live On A Bridge Or Plant Potatoes But It Is Fine For Comings And Goings, Meetings, Partings And Long Views And A Real Connection To Someplace Else Where You May In The Crazy Weathers Of Struggle How And Again Want To Be.

Memory In Greek Mythology Is The Mother Of The Muses, And It Is So For Me. Both Personal And Societal Memory Move Me Strongly, And That Is One Of The Sources Of My Writing.

When She Kissed Him, He Melted Like A Lump Of Milk Chocolate.