Okay another poem. Me and my little brother both feel the same way about birthdays, they are best ignored, and frankly, we didn't ask to be born, so why celebrate it? So, one year I wrote him a birthday poem, with my own sentiments about it. This is a personal favorite, and I had fun with it, though it is a little long.... I really wanted to explore my feelings on birthdays for him
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I always have poetry goals for mine and for this one, I really wanted to explore what I call "slant" or "off the beat" rhymes. Eminem is the master of this, actually, he's an incredible poet. They're "sorta" rhymes where most of the word does, and they're closely spaced together and whatnot, or not appearing where expected at the end of a line (though sometimes). But, enough technicalities, moving on!
Happy Birthday
The way I see it, I do not recall requesting to be born,
all unaware, I rose to the top of the victimhood heap
shadow steps walked me, inexorable, coaxing me to sleep
to spring, reborn; far below now, faint and shifting in my eyes: the earth.
No, I don’t remember demanding for my birth,
to be delivered to my unchosen mother my
similarly unclean and sinning sisters and brothers
to my absent and indifferent father; nor society, no
I did not request a single breath
or to give up the smallest winged feather.
I didn’t beg to change, from a white goose flying instinctually
into a constantly self-aware, breathing, and living mirror-other.
Why would I ask to be born,
when, perhaps, I rested, such unyielding and quiet marble
or a cloud that drifted into shapes.
I didn’t seek this long, dark fall into disgrace,
as who, upon being asked, would seek this choice for failure or
for grace; who
dares answer the call,
the request, from even a most high, sacred thing up above,
who would acquiesce, becoming a helpless, mewling baby
so dependent on imperfect beings, also lost? So, I list, less brave than
those who may have answered firmly to that question, “Yes.”
Though I did not cry out to be born, and though at
times lifelessness calls long and gentle through the marrow of my bones,
I also did not seek to be dead,
I desired not to live and not to die, at all.
Yet here I stand, steady on my feet. Each day
falls, sometimes restless, at other times replete,
and though I grew, loved and hated, fearless but small,
wrinkles collect at last like dander of pets, long buried under my toes.
Still, I cannot understand how I could ever give assent
to that which engraved upon my new sprung body, both my birth and death date.
Though many that I loved, hearing the call, dove
steep over life, to nothing at all…. I will remember I
did not seek one lucid breath, one single step of this, and yet
around me swirl all colors, shapes and sounds I am permitted sense.
And still, there linger days that I pretend I do not recognize my name.
I wonder what inside this world would have changed? Would
my son have been born to another mother would my
husband have sought to find a different mate, would he have been
happier or sadder, would he instead have flown beside me
like a homing pigeon, streaking above, instead?
I do not know, but I know this. Each birthday I gaze around,
and wonder
, Did I ask for this? Or, did another fail before my place in
line, and I was beckoned forward into a life that sometimes doesn’t seem to
fit the shoes upon my feet? My head tilts weary as
I inspect this place. I’m tired and I sense the space,
that one, the sleeping self, that less weary indemnity we term “Heaven.”
Perhaps, upon my death I’ll beg my coffin and my resting ground for mercy
instead; to turn me to a tree—a tall and quiet oak, spinning carbon dioxide
into oxygen. My being enacting photosynthesis, sprouting leaves
and seeds; resting, my feet will no longer walk, penetrating deep
into the earth. I will not breathe, nor think, I may
remember, but I will not speak, and I will hold my breath
my shoots will drink the water from above, the nutrients beneath
I’ll grow, straight tall and free; and if there is a single thought at all,
it will never be, “Another birthday, to remind me, once afresh.”
I'd love to workshop it, but I'm not about to pay $$ to attend a U of A poetry class and be surrounded by 19 year old partiers, and unfortunately there are no decent writer's circles in Tucson that I've really found, LOL, I asked my novel editor once if I should go to the Tucson Book fair for contacts and she was like, "Don't GO, I've been, it's terrible... So I labor on this for the most part alone.... But I have fun
Anna
