I was thinking of you the other day Ken and now here you are with a poem!
I think this is very good, especially the first stanza, the precision and
power of its language. And the ending.
The second stanza seems too abstract. Would he really say "my older son",
etc? Wouldn't he use their names?
Janet
On 11/01/2008, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> FOR WHOM?
>
> My mother, who never ceased complaining
> throughout most of the 86 years of her life
> finally shut down and up for her final three days.
> And what could l say to this failing and senseless hulk
> that once had carried me in her body and then on her back?
> "Oh Mummy, don't die, come back, life can be beautiful"?
> As bad as things got, would get, had to get,
> there was none of that kissy-kissy bullshit
> in the moments of her ending.
>
> So what I said--words I was too much a coward to say
> if she were not in a coma and thus could not answer:
> It is time for you to die, Mom, nobody can prevent it,
> if you come back it will only be to more pain,
> more of that horror-house nursing home,
> more of my older son crying, of my younger one hiding,
> of the wife detached from you in death as you
> detached from her in life, and to me drinking and
> pill-popping my way through my filial visits.
>
> I believe because I must believe that there are people
> waiting for you on whatever Side there is,
> not perhaps a God but my father who thought he was
> and your sisters who knew they were
> and even your parents who were Communists
> so didn't give a shit one way or the other
> except they really thought Earl Browder was Moshiach.
>
> I was assured she could hear me but could not answer:
> the perfect set-up for a man like me who never had a word
> to say to her that she didn't have a smartassed insult for,
> a retort dipped in acid.
> Who was I talking to, then?
> Who was I spouting that Other Side crap to?
> To her, who believed in Absolute Zero
> and the nullity of death followed by dirt?
> "La morte e nulla!"
>
> Or to myself who would not accept the end
> as the end, who needed that belief system,
> whacked-out though some might find it,
> to quell the darkness that had taken my soul
> and was now fitting a burkha to smother it?
>
> KW/1-10-08
>
> Written after listening to Terry Gross interview David Rieff, who
> described the death of his mother Susan Sontag four years ago. He has
> written a book about her death and the questions of how do you talk to
> the dying: in his case, a brilliant thinker who nevertheless was
> deluding herself that she could survive her third and most relentless
> cancer when all Rieff had to do was look at her to see the suffering
> she was enduring. The question for Rieff was far more complex than
> this statement: do you lie to her or tell her a truth she really does
> not want to hear?
>
> --
> ------------------
> Kenneth Wolman kenwolman.wordpress.com
> Abuse of power comes as no surprise--Jenny Holzer
>
--
Janet Jackson
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www.proximity.webhop.net
www.myspace.com/poetjj
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