I
I saw the best minds of my gender destroyed by material madness, gorging hysterical spandex, hauling their Hummers, dragging children up and down Wisteria Lanes, seeking 100% money-back guaranteed certainty, happiness,
Who sliced and served backhanded barbs in matching skirt shirt costumes, peroxided wigs and tennis ball implants calling game, set, game, set in a pleasure match that never ended but extended bent to Saturday night at the club teetering in their high-heeled identities toward morning-after puke in the pot at the end of a rainbow of martinis, flushing away their porcelain reflection just in time to drive just-say-no kids to Sunday school and DARE workshops,
Who galloped clinging to a slim fast treadmill of filled-up moments, incontinent, leaking to-do lists down hairy or waxed legs depending on their soul-selling priorities: the commitment to which asylum – children or self?
Who Botoxed, epilated, peeled and paid to be cut and sucked and lifted from Venus bodies, glorious temples to the passage of Time,
Who held themselves hostage in kitchens with cold cooktops and flawless stainless steel sink beds of nails behind Lean Cuisine ramparts and pizza box towers,
Who cloaked themselves in Pottery Barn burqa drapes in their green-zoned islands of security, eyes covered so as not to see across the sea to distant deserts where humanity faltered amid detonated dreams,
Who digested war like water, unmindful, pissing clear, no trace of blood,
Who sought book club salvation for two hours each month, but otherwise treated questions and nuance and prick of conscience like beggars on the front porch and called 9-1-1 to take them away, out of sight, out of mind uncertain,
Who feared vagina out loud monologues and the peculiar arrangement of letters on a page: s-c-r-o-t-u-m, mmm, mmm good,
Who allowed only answers to be spoken at their tables and in the family room theater seating in front of the flat screen wall of discontent and razor wire around the perimeter of McMansion consciousness,
Who wandered restless lost without a clue through Ethan Allen rooms and rooms looking for a place to rest or read or dream the dreams of youth,
Who re-fueled for Suburban Yukon Expeditions on the same suburban streets, angry bird-flippers leaving woolly mammoth carbon footprints in their wakes,
Who monitored children pets in hand-knit sweaters on cell phone leashes waiting for pooper-scooper mommy at every intersection,
Who cultivated underage résumés, sold their cookies, earned their badges, nailed themselves on a cross-trainer, won the MVP trophy wife of the year award,
Who injected the house chardonnay, spread their legs, sucked the tools of handymen and swallowed the Prozac lure, hook line and sinker, to get from one moment to the next,
Whose husbands exchanged pipe and slippers for 9-irons and Footjoy and joyless roamed corporate fairways seeking cheating short-cuts, playing Enron numbers games, growing 401Ks all day, excused, while children are tucked in miles and miles away,
Who comforted themselves with dollops of botulism honey dissolved in warm hormone-laced milk from mad cows before bed,
Who slept dreamless exhausted Ambien sleep, no room for narrative or puzzling connections concocted by mangled braids of past present future stories,
Who never did purr, never did know contentment, and then woke up, alone, in the middle of the darkest night and shouted “where am I?”
II.
What serpent shoved code red fruits whole down their Eve’s apple throats and left them glassy-eyed, breathless conscious for the choking slow deaths of their own twin Babel towers of logic and imagination?
Fear! Fear whose rattle seduces 24/7! Ads! News! Ads! No news without ads! Ads for wars! Ads against fevers and hearing loss! Ads against diabetes and incontinence! Ads against hot flashes and limp dicks! The impotence of a nation! Medicate! Medicate!
Fear whose focus narrows to the daily! Martha Stewart dominatrix PTA Queens with fears of failure! Chocolate macadamia nut nightmares!
Class rank! Offspring SATs and ACTs! And ladders to climb before I sleep! And ladders to climb before I sleep!
Fear whose mind cannot remember! Boundless curiosity! Energy! Desire! Pumping humping coursing-through desire! Amnesia!
Fear whose forked tongue spreads illness microscopic! Streptococcus! Salmonella! E Coli! Listeria monocytogenes! Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean!
Fear who paralyzes! Fear who shuts up the questioners! Fear who makes us stupid! Fear who works in black and white! Fear who erases color! Fear who sends us back to cooking and cleaning, mopping bloodshed, burying the dead!
Fear in the air! Particulate matter unseen! Fear of the water! Mercury and PCBs! Fear of the earth! Lead and DDT! Superfund Wonderwoman, mother, save us! Breast of the species, sustain us! In public! At the mall! On a bus! In a movie theater!
Fear! Tsunamis of terror! Hurricanes of horror! Breaking waves of fear then riptide retribution of oil thievery and violence! Violence!
Fear! Uncertainty! Fear of the other! Mutilated women, limbless children, broken men! Mission accomplished!
Fear whose patriotic exclamations and exhortations egg us on! To Spy! Blacklist! Point fingers! Infiltrate! Accumulate!
Fear who despises freedom and choice! Open wide for your medicated muting!
Straitjackets in all the latest styles! Spiked heel detainees on all fours! Lies! Rape and murder! Lies! Torture! Lies! Greed and filth! Lies!
Mother Mary, do you read me! Remote control button-pushing, high def, digital satellite information superhighway high-speed chase! Mother Mary, come in!
Fear whom I renounce! Fear whose coils I pry from my brain and soul! Fear whose venom will not spurt from my pen or tongue or womb! Fear who will not teach my children!
Throw down your AK-47s! Million mom marches to the beat of a different drum! Love! Compassion! Forgiveness! Resounding from the American suburbs! Change of pace! Peace! Change of heart! Peace! Change of beat! Peace! New world order of candlelight vigils, mantras and meditations that awaken crash-test dummies who learn to walk through pristine forests and armies of trees in interspecies harmony!
They wrestled in master bedrooms and custom kitchens in the darkness of their primitive ordered sanitized certainty caves! Then dynamite blasts! Rolling thunder boulders shifted! 3-car garage doors lifted! Fear banished in fire! light!
They made crazy Isis knot chalk drawings on blacktop driveways! There were barefoot dances in the grass! Swinging from trees! Fences fell in exotic border crossings! Voices lifted in one language song! Hills and plains and oceans teemed with Life! Hope! Trust! Insane maniacal unbelievable impossible Trust!
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