I admit I’m not a poetry lover. I don’t even like poetry. I like it better when it rhymes, like the Ancient Mariner. Sometimes I read the poetry in The New Yorker, and inevitably sneer or mutter “Jesus Christ.” I used to think it was a failure on my part, but now I’m comfortable with all of my biases.

I once had a job that involved stupid magazines with stupid ads for suckers, like devices to enlarge your breasts overnight. One of the ads was for a poetry contest, that was clearly a scam. It was something like “YOU TOO COULD BE A POET! ENTER THIS CONTEST AND WIN $10,000!”

I showed it to my young teenager and we decided to send in a poem to find out what the scam was. It was back in 1990, but I still remember laughing as we took turns composing it. Max was reading Stephen King at the time, who was a master of the idiotic mixed metaphor, and you can see the Stephen King influence throughout.

Sure enough, our poem won an Honorable Mention! and we could see it published in a nice anthology for only $49.95! We decided to pass. *If you want to try this too, go here.

Keeping in mind my disappreciation for poetry, I was excited to discover a poem by my husband’s ex-wife, my bête noire and the Anti-me. While I try to follow her monthly column in her community newspaper, somehow the poem escaped my attention until now. “Escaped my attention” is the kind of thing she would write, so I apologize, but she would have prefaced it with “hitherto.”

I won’t pretend to “get” this poem; You don’t need to get it to enjoy it, right? But once I figured out its subject, I was inspired to write my own elegy:

Ode To The Tennessee 3

What fresh hell is this! Voting
To kick them out for
Protesting

Even the fat white lady knew how
Wrong
This was. Plus

The 2 young black guys
Are so hot!
Especially the Brother with
The earring and long hair

I even followed
Him
On Instagram.

I shared it with my friend M, a published novelist and hardcore fan of the Ex’s work, and he countered with this:

Tennessee 3 braving
and behaving
No
The guy with the Afro is the hotter of the 2

Whew! I’d hate to have to pick the winner here, but I would love to pick the winner of your entries! So, (YOU TOO COULD BE A POET!) please submit a poem about the Tennessee Three and the winner will get a nice certificate! If anyone out there is an artist, you can help design it.

Don’t be shy! There are no losers, only winners!

Everyone I know and everyone you know can quote the first line of This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin, a poem he wrote in 1971.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

That one line has served as gospel for at least two generations.  It validates adolescent resentment like nothing else. See, a famous poet says you fucked us up, you fuckers. It’s official.

And of course they do, your mum and dad. Because everyone is fucked up, and everything starts at home, where grown ups can make random rules because you are powerless.

If only they’d been more affectionate or less affectionate, more involved or less involved, more attentive or less smothering, if only they’d fought less or fought more. Or as Larkin complains,

They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Philip Larkin followed his own advice and didn’t have kids. So he never discovered a consecutive truth that parents learn the hard way. They fuck you up, your kids.

They fuck you up in small ways or in ways that crush you. They rob you of sleep and peace of mind, for starters. You will never rest easy, once you’re a parent. Every fever, illness or broken bone, you’d do anything to take their place. If they’re not home on time, you will be worried, then frantic. Every hurt they experience, you experience with them, but magnified. They own your heart, and they don’t care if they break it.

They didn’t ask to be born, you know. So fuck you. Did you make sacrifices for them? Too bad, that was your job.

I wish I’d had more compassion for my mom, even though she was so unfit for motherhood. I wouldn’t budge in my resentment until she got cancer. I could list the ways she failed me but never put myself in her shoes.

I used to urge my childless friends to have babies, if they asked my opinion. I told them that motherhood was so transcendent, so sublime, that life would be eternal high school without the experience. They would never know the scope and magnitude of pure selfless love. That part is true, I believe, but I regret my sales pitch now. I didn’t factor in how much they fuck you up.

Most of you parents would do it again with no hesitation, right? I would too, because those happy years were the best! But the downside, oh my god, it is terrible. I once considered setting myself on fire – it’s the method most available to women in India, and I thought the physical agony might cancel out the emotional distress. I got over it, so don’t freak out, alright? I’m just trying to illustrate the downness of the downside.

You expect your kids to love you back. You have all kinds of expectations.

Philip Larkin, I’ve always respected your English miserabilism. You were no match for Beckett, but who is? Anyway, not being a poet I can only offer this haiku I just made up.

You poor angry boy
If you don’t feel I’m your mom
You won’t get the house.

I discovered this new video because it features my darling Iggy Azalea. I had no idea who T.I was, that’s how ignorant I am.

But now I know, and Knowing is the First Step.

Anyway, T.I. is somewhat controversial, but that’s due to his personal life. “No Mediocre” is just a standard rap song evidently, and yet it is so rich in poetry. Let me share some of the lyrics:

Right hand in the air
I solemnly swear
I never fuck a bitch if she don’t do her hair
No more, you won’t get no dick if there’s a bush down there
Girl I should see nothing but pussy when I look down there

Fair enough. Got it.

However, rap genius offers choices in interpreting the heartfelt couplet about dick with regard to bush.

See? He has standards. But if a bitch meet the standards, here is what will happen:

Out here trying to find someone that better than my last go
Take her to my castle
Drown her in my cash flow

Okay! Again, got it. But I like this clarification from rap genius:

“T.I. would like to find a female that looks better than his last, if that’s possible since he all he fuck is bad bitches.”

And with a net worth of around $50 million, T.I. can afford to be discriminating with his bitches, and he don’t want no bitch that will settle for mediocre either. It’s all good.

I received a price-list in the mail for a new waxing salon in my neighborhood. As a child of the sixties, I am innocent of the ins and outs of waxing. All I know is that is hurts and I don’t want any.

But this price-list is so captivating! I had to read some of it aloud, just to savor the language.

‘Buttocks strip’ struck me as the funniest, most poignant words I had ever read. It evokes so much…

But then, I noticed ‘Buttocks strip touch-up.’ Hmm.

I also noticed that men are charged more than woman, even for knee waxing. Would anyone actually go to have just their knees waxed? Why? I challenge anyone to explain this.

I love this fucking price-list. It is poetry. It came from ‘Uni K Wax Center’ and you can like them on facebook.

Beyonce celebrated her 30th birthday on her yacht in Italy, with family and a few close friends. Her close friend Gwyneth (??) was seen giving Beyonce an envelope.   Look how happy she is after she opens it!

I need to know what was in that envelope.*

Suggestions?

*My friend Maxine said “I would like to think it was a specially penned poem.” If you agree with Maxine, please approximate the poem.

Three months ago, I wrote about how hard it is to accept being powerless. Now, I am a malignant mass of seething hatred for my ex-husband. If only I could kill him. It would be an act of mariticide, although I don’t know if this applies to exes.

I hate that miserable fucker. I called and tried hard to be nice, to project friendliness. I asked when I could come over to see Max’s things, hoping I could borrow some of his books. We always loved the same books and asked each other for recommendations.

But no! Still no. That bastard is like a character from a Dickens novel, a mean old man who lives to say the word No. His exact words were: “If and when I’m ready, I’ll let you know.” When I began to argue my case, he announced triumphantly: “I won’t be bullied by you.” (Repeat this in your head with an English accent, to get the full effect.) Nothing would change his mind. I lost my temper and he intoned  darkly:   “Don’t call me again.”

Last night I cried hysterically until I couldn’t breath, not because of the books but because of the situation of marrying a man who won’t let you see your son’s belongings, who has to try to control things even after death.

A reader named Marygrace sent me a link to a poem by Julie Sheehan that expresses the scope of my hatred with stunning accuracy. It is a singular gem that everyone should read and pass on, until the whole world can find solace in its perfection.
~

Hate Poem

I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped
in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging
from under my third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases
hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious
symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.

You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head
under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit
practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning
to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one
individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity
of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.

by Charles Baudelaire

This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds.   One wants to suffer in front of the stove and another believes that he will get well near the window.

It always seems to me that I will be better off there where I am not, and this question of moving about is one that I discuss endlessly with my soul

“Tell me, my soul, my poor chilled soul, what would you think about going to live in Lisbon?   It must be warm there, and you’ll be able to soak up the sun like a lizard there.   That city is on the shore; they say that it is built all out of marble, and that the people there have such a hatred of the vegetable, that they tear down all the trees.   There’s a country after your own heart — a landscape made out of light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them!”

My soul does not reply.

“Because you love rest so much, combined with the spectacle of movement, do you want to come and live in Holland, that beatifying land?   Perhaps you will be entertained in that country whose image you have so often admired in museums.   What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts and ships anchored at the foot of houses?”

My soul remains mute.

“Does Batavia please you more, perhaps?   There we would find, after all, the European spirit married to tropical beauty.”

Not a word. — Is my soul dead?

Have you then reached such a degree of torpor that you are only happy with your illness?   If that’s the case, let us flee toward lands that are the analogies of Death. — I’ve got it, poor soul!   We’ll pack our bags for Torneo.   Let’s go even further, to the far end of the Baltic.   Even further from life if that is possible: let’s go live at the pole.   There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and augments monotony, that half of nothingness.   There we could take long baths in the shadows, while, to entertain us, the aurora borealis send us from time to time its pink sheaf of sparkling light, like the reflection of fireworks in Hell!”

Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely she shrieks at me: “It doesn’t matter where!   It doesn’t matter where!   As long as it’s out of this world!”

In my youth, Max Blagg played a key role, which included my introduction to Astral Weeks.   He was my first “boyfriend” when I moved to London. To a 15 year old juvenile delinquent from L.A., Max was the essence of English allure.

Max was always larger than life, one of those people who emote at high volume and always teeter on the edge of elation or dark despair. He seemed always to be yearning for another environment, another notebook or another woman. He once spent several weeks bitching about his futile search for a Victorian nightshirt. And I once risked his wrath by secretly borrowing his pink corduroy Levi’s, even though I could barely stuff my fat ass into them.

Max lives in NYC now, where he is a poet and man-about-town. I’ve only seen him once in the intervening years. But every time I hear certain records from 1969, I recall the indescribable joy of being free to do everything and everyone, and those memories usually contain an element of Max Blagg.

I missed out on high school but I racked up an education. Some of it was rough but mostly it was thrilling. It’s the kind of shit you can take pride in once you’re a boring housewife with costochondritis.

Happy New Year, Max! I’m glad you’re still around. In my heart you’ll always be 20 years old and the hottest thing on wheels.

Listen to Mrs. Palin’s reaction to David Letterman’s joke about her buying make-up at Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight-attendant look.”

Oh, Mrs. P, he didn’t mean Bloomingdale’s literally! Now I’m wondering if she’s even capable of finding her way around the Bloomie’s cosmetics department.

Isn’t it fun to have her around again? I wish that if she gives up her bid for the presidency, someone will appoint her our Poet Laureate! She could write poems about the First Dude, she could rhyme Bristol with “pistol,” I don’t know, I just really see it working out well for this great nation of ours.

There is a $35,000 stipend that she could use to buy some closed-toe shoes OR to get a baby sitter for that poor little Trig.

Somehow perfect
Valley Girl diction, monotone
inappropriate laughter

Almost Asian
but not enough
Big mistake
rocking that teased hair.

~

dedicated to alittlelux, who sent me here.