In justified outrage and self-disgust,
I lectured my two girls, again, about
thoughtlessness, of blinding their
growing minds to the necessity
of picking up after themselves, of
helping keep the house up, of making
a conscious effort to notice the inescapable
need of a family to help each other stay sane
and healthy in a faster-paced, advanced world.

(I’m going insane…)

How ridiculous I am. In the beginning
of my life, though aimless, I was tidy, mostly.
Enter the past, or, B.C. Before Children. Sure, it was
easier, a simpler time, before computers, or age,
or occupation of a rented mining house
for thirteen years, before the seven current cats,
an old Shar Pei abandoned by the neighbors,
who moved away six years ago, and two
rabbits. I smile wryly, knowing it could be
worse. One year, we raised twenty
4-H chickens in the backyard, through
the length of an Arizona summer. I was
constantly spraying them down with the hose,
worried the heat would kill them, like it did
Alec, my daughter’s longhaired rabbit, last year.

(Guilt of duplicity festers, killing bits of soul.)

Looking up from my frantic thinkings, here,
outside, where it is a little windy with cool
March’s spring-breathe, my eyes and mind
are caught, by a wondrous pattern. Three,
inch and a half, vining Vinca flowers,
purple blue in color, have lined their
star shapes together in a descending order,
synchronized in birth’s innocent amnesia.
They dance and bob in the errant breezes,
and I can’t look away, see physics and quantums,
pasts and futures, life and death,
dwelling in their proudly naive existence.

(Synchronicity begins in observation)

But, I’m still angry, and make myself look away, to see
a realization. The reason my personal world
is continual, muddy chaos, in mental, physical
and spiritual aspects, is because I gave up
making an effort, directly related to others
giving up making an effort. I am not
a martyr-mother, I am an artist, imagination
and creativity control my mind, my thoughts,
my actions. I am also not a strong-willed person
who follows through with discipline of others.
I am totally undisciplined, repeatedly and
knowingly neglecting what should be done
for the dynamics of Time’s movement, for
whims, cravings, dreaming, thoughts, rain,
yard-walking, and cloud gazing.

(There dwells the “I” of ‘Me’.)

I stomp back into the house, for more coffee,
and to take one of the two Valiums I have left,
a ‘gift’ from a friend, an eternity ago. I make
a few more desperate prodding hints, like,
how I would have a heart attack if either did
dishes, or vacuumed, or took out the garbage
without being told. It’s a pop quiz, to see if
they just heard my words, or if they ‘listened’
to my words. They both failed, as did I, shredding
my hopes and heart for the zillionth time. The dishes,
ready to be washed in the sink, are waiting for me…

(The wrenching pressure of disappointment
expounds discontent.)

So, I grabbed my composition book, my frenzy,
my cigarettes, and told the girls, in that slow,
deliberate speech people adapt when they are afraid
they are going to break, I was going outside.
To write a piece concepted a few days ago,
about cloud jellyfish and vapor formed marine life
floating in the sky. A happy, whimsical piece. I
wanted to, had a page splashed full
of researched synonyms just begging for completion.
But, as I tried to unstress my trembling body,
I thought how I was mostly happy absorbing
the souls of Earth’s nature, rather than dealing
with Earth’s burden of humanity’s sentience:
the cognizance of compounded, convoluted
degrees between the balance, or non-balance
of conditioned thoughts and actions,
and the almost-impossibility of freeing self
from destructive, mutated emotions.

(Harmony, in a world of possibilities, isn’t
a given.)

I take a break from writing, look around
at my growing, blooming, rented yard.
Caress with eyes the brilliant-yellow daffodils
and the purple hyacinth, the rush of reaching,
living honeysuckle’s rejuvenating stems,
all expanding their rebirth, and I don’t
want to return to the house of failed
responsibility, of mundane, futile inanity,
of my self-wrought, dysfunctional,
everyday life. I want to stay here, outside,
flying my spaceship picnic table. The ethereal
punch of mind-pain clings to my fettered bones
with a world’s weight. I can’t ‘live’ while
I am slowly being eaten away in the precious
core of my being. My realm’s death is imminent.
Will I dare to fly? And, in flying, release
the 'fabricated' souls under my care?

(There is no real balance in a mind with
Man’s original conscience, integrating into
humanity’s development.)

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 3/6/05