May Day by Phillis Levin

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.







.

And the locals shout May Day May Day May Day and you run down the street thinking your house is burning down or your cat is drowning.

But no, its just May, pomegranates falling. May with its blood seeds.

My mother used to sing me

Today is the day
they give babies away
for a half a pound of tea

open the lid
and out pops a kid!
for a half a pound of tea

and it used to scare the crap out of me. She also used to sing me old Ukrainian songs about bashing in baby's heads by the riverbank.

.



I don't like it when your face is like that.
All teeth and muscle.
When you finally smile at me again
I keep quiet and do not tell you that
you have wrinkles by your eyes I love it I love you.



.

Yesterday we were out and you ran off with an orange tree. A whole orange tree and you placed it in our backyard like a prize.

The cat tails sway or is it your beautiful beautiful arms coming towards me saying hello let me hold you closer.

You hate the throw pillows I have and you keep saying best best best into my face and soon I will go to San Diego without you and yet I will still have you

as though you are like America

I take you everywhere.



.


Perhaps a kiss does not make it all better.
But it does make it all worth it.

Once I was half asleep and you took a pen and wrote "this is where the hugs go" on my belly and when I woke up you stretched like a feral cat.

Farmers sometimes talk about the hard season. I think we all have one. But we would all starve if farmers gave up on their crops when it got difficult.

I hoard parts of us. Old airplane tickets, e-mails, the first grocery list ever made. I staple them into a journal from your mother.

I once read that the Aztecs locked up virgins during the avocado harvest, but locking away your secrets never makes a nicer crop.

I spend hours with rusty Jeep parts and fancy sheets.

And I still refuse to use a hose to water my garden.

You want to buy a hot tub and I think you're insane and you look at me as though you are a crowbar and you have lost my key. Let's get married, I like to say.

If you twist a rope and twist a rope and twist a rope, it always pops back into its original shape, as though it knows its purpose.



.




Tell me about your mother