The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Wed 3/29/06)

The Mother

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Gwendolyn Brooks

********************

RL

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

:cry:



I am fucking bawling my eyes out!!!





just when I thought it was getting peaceful in this thread

:hug:

RL

I like her style. Nikki Giovanni has some stuff in a similar vein that's at the top of my list of favorites, as well.

Thanks darlin'.:hi:

:hi:

RL

gwendolyn brooks is a fantastic poet -- and this is one of my favs.

thanks.

:hi:

RL

:wow:

I've read this back in college and it stuck with me.

Nice find Retro. :hi:

Anytime a woman miscarries, or has an abortion, things are tough.

I miscarried my first pregnancy, and I never forgot it......

Even though I did not want to have a defective child......

It still was very depressing, and I worried that I would never have a healthy one....

I did, though......

A great poem, IMHO....I thank you......:cry:


:loveya: :hug:

:puke: