The wild ones

The wild ones are not
the ones out on the streets at night
clad in black and stainless steel.

Not the ones bed hopping
anointed in anonymous sweat.

The wild ones
are far more sinister than that
they pay taxes and set their alarms
every night.

They obey traffic laws and vote.

They’ve breastfed and baby worn.

The feral ones wear their scarred skin
of past cuts and scraped knees
and surgeries
(that is not polite to mention
at the dinner table.)

Those wild ones are far more dangerous.

Their savagery
always crouching inside
and ready to leap
while their carpool
or do the weekly shop.

They sometimes hold graduate degrees
and they may teach at universities,
or practice law,
or something else
equally respectable.

They sing to their babies
and they teach them to read
and they stay stoic while their bleeding.

They don’t make a fuss.

And sometimes,
sometimes
 they break down
on the produce aisle.

Minor insomniac poetry

My stubborn insomnia

so much like me:

proud,

determined

and infinitely foolish.

I’d make a good vampire:

nocturnal and broody

disenchanted,

existential.

I surely know how to draw blood.

Afraid to see my sadness in a picture

On the fringe

These days I feel like

I’m living on the fringe,

out of control,

not very motherly of me,

but I’m off the hook

the baby died.

He/she doesn’t need me to be a good mom

or folic acid.

My other baby is growing up,

and she mothers me from time to time

(though my therapist frowns upon it.)

I don’t sleep well

no one taught me how.

My daughter is trying to teach me:

she says you only have to close your eyes

and think of something soft.

I guess I don't have enough soft things

to think about.

I’m reckless

with my body,

it may be my temple,

but I want to deface it.

No worries,

there is nothing sacred inside.

Not anymore.

I wake up early,

I do my chores,

I teach M her letters.

I mostly worry.

But I’m drunk with the vertigo of wakefulness,

I need to be knocked out.

I read well into the night.

I write from time to time.

Tomorrow I will wake up in time,

I won’t hit snooze,

it won’t be easy or pretty

but I’ll do it.

I’m not expected to be a good human being,

to eat on schedule

and go to bed at a sensible time.

No need to scold me,

the world does not feel the need to berate me.

I do a far better job

I'm a cotton ball

"I'm a cotton ball"

M said proverbially with all the abundant wisdom of her four years of age.

I humbly asked for an explanation, full aware that my ignorance of the term showed my poorly evolved and pedestrian mind.

What I was able to understand from her explanation is that dolls are stuffed with cotton and/or their hair is made of it. And that the silly crazy girls who deliver ingenious one-liners (such as herself) are cotton balls.

She called herself one after an effervescent display of zaniness.

She's like a cotton ball

weightless

and fleeting

as bubbles of champagne.

She's light

like a golden spec of dust

like a dandelion blowing in the wind.

Cotton balls do not possess the insanity of tortured poets. 

M's quirkiness is far above 

and I read it in her cotton candy smiles.

I have not reincarnated enough.

I'm not transcended enough

to reach that cloud-like state of being.

 

But I'll dream every night of being a cotton ball.