I'm pretty sure no one reads this and I suppose it's a good season for talking to the wall. I've been unable to get along with anyone but strangers & acquaintances and ... I don't know. The internet is my friend. If I'm going to be a loner I ought to do something amazing. I keep going back and forth... looking at adoption sites, then I behold the little one wriggling and pulsating on the screen, receive most of the babygear I need without the humiliations of a "shower," and I'm like, oh, yes really is someone brewing in there, and I forgot, for a moment, my concerns.
Yesterday was a blessed day and today I dressed up and looked decent for the first time in awhile (until I had an absolute fit and smeared the mascara per usual) smart curve hugging clothes - I'm not showing yet of course this being my first, though I've gained around five pounds, which I could spare and I certainly have warranted with massive binges and still I am not so happy about it - metal drop earrings and make up that sort of distracted from the many eruptions of my face.
Yesterday I read and walked and ate well (and started a food journal, for a variety of reasons, not least to establish a habit for breastfeeding to track if something in particular upsets the baby). I volunteered at the foodbank with the Boys and Girls Club and it was delightful to be physical, to take items off shelves, wipe the shelves, and return the items in greater order. To put on gloves and bag up frozen cherries, to help some of the slower kids participate.
After a break for dinner and internet, I went to the jail for almost four hours. I presented and facilitated discussion of part of Ginsberg's "America" last night with the female and male inmate groups (&, as I've been doing, created impromptu pregnancy support forum with the participants, almost all of whom are parents, & if not perhaps the ultimate role models, I still appreciate the stories they have to tell).
The guard in the female block objected to someone reading "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," though this is what it said. Then I asked participants to write their own poem/ letter to America.
Here are some excerpts, with slight edits, & permission (except from Ginsberg):
America by Allen Ginsberg (first part)
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia....
"America Thank you for the beautiful girls we're given,
Though in other countries there's the same variety of women
To all my soldiers in county jail, I salute you
Why can't we be united like we used to?
We move things around like heroine and crack
You're worried about that, when there's terrorist acts?
Why do you act like problems solve themselves?
In an 8 by 12 cell, the equation is hell
If I was in the army I could kill and fight
But civilian kill civilian and they'd give me life...."
- J. Choate
"....
February 5 2010
The country's as fucked up
As it's ever been
Will we turn around
And do it again
Trillions of dollars
Will we ever be out of debt
Probably not
That's what I bet
Sold out to China
Too many like their food
We love their fortune cookies
But that isn't good
Telescopes hunting
For other planets that live
Another disaster
Borrow some money to give
Americans taking babies
But leaving the sick
Distracting with one hand
While the other does tricks
We'll show the world
Who has the biggest dick
Don't so no to war
Let's get into it thick
Put all the drug users
Into our jails
Until we go broke
And our system then fails
....
What will we do
When the Chinamen come
When we sell them our homes
That won't be any fun
Or maybe the Iranians
Will put us in our place
We should sell them Iraq
Reunite Persia to save face
-D. Mallett
*
Jail Anthem
I Hate Being told what to do
When to shit and how to move
What time we eat and all the food
I hate being broke as ah fucking joke
Money on the books but I can't buy smokes
Can't drive a car or even a boat
I'm sick of hearing the word Nope
I hate waking up to the bad days
Lookin around at the possible gays
Me and my duaghter can't even play
I hate that I'm back here in jail
Stuck here without any bail
Everyday they holding my mail
Rehab's nothin but a fairy tale
-J. Howard
My free write on it was much less encompassing but a little more aligned with Ginsberg's tone:
America you gave me all the cans of cubed
fruit and kidney beans a girl could
want
You measured and dated baby after
baby and said, You do whatever you want
You said, The third time's the charm
America you made me feel like a feisty piece of
shit in my 1994 Oldsmobile, your drive thrus taunting
I navigated front seat electronic window stuck at 2" open
America you've been screaming at me to "Lose the baby weight" since
I was a baby, weighing your values in the
express lane. You told me to be young and vibrant, to
focus on a career. You told me seek first the kingdom of
individuality, then effortless love would be
added unto it. I tried to
interpret my dreams they became thick with gunsmoke,
the foreign accent of Grand Theft Auto sex gods, America
you left my faither to raise us on hardtack and Genesis and
whatever he picked up at those single parent support groups.
The new wife of my father made chop suey and
eventually, whole grains. Her well behaved daughters placed the
ground wheat berries and everything else, the same amount everytime,
in a bread maching.
The old wife of my father (the dark one who lived to lose her tooth,
drunk on the pavement, weak from hepatitis), used to knead with her
dusty knuckles, measured nothing.
America I have lost all sense of proportion. I don't
know the first thing about politics. I voted for Nader the year I was 18,
and America, I hardly ever wear my seatbelt. I fantasize about dying
every day and take fish oil, valerian, probiotics.
I made a pair of mittens on a sewing machine with lots of supervision, I
was hoping to woo him slow and sweet, to turn back
time, I dragged myself antsy through the stitchy process, listening to
Miley Cyrus, who said, "If you text it, I'll delete it," among
other things.
The Greyhound bus could not make it up the snowy hill so I
walked down it with the mittens, smoking my last Pall Mall for a
very long time because despite the reinvented
argyle sweater I was
already
knocked up.
*
"America why do you have to put people in jail like Dean Mallett who needs to get out to take care of his twenty cats." - Charlie
"Do you want me to make a loud sound when the two minutes are up?" - the guy who keeps farting extremely loudly during our writing times.
"No thanks, you've contributed plenty tonight."
"She's a douchebag. I want to punch her in the face then have sex with her." - the farting guy.
"You are a misogynist. While I appreciate the comedy, I hope you never date anyone again."
*
"Don't waste your time with that Castenada stuff... It's interesting, I know, all the teleporting... I wasted a lot of time with it, but..."
"I know, it's not Gospel Truth."
