HOPELESSLY HUMAN HABITS

HOPELESSLY HUMAN HABITS

 susan ambrosino

Are you required to love all your fellow earthmates ?

Must you understand every one of them,

think of them as brothers and sisters?

All those people with boot prints on their backs,

tear stains down their cheeks

runny noses, sores, sunken bellies

or simply a need to protect their failures with lies.

Can love of mankind make you a poet, a philosopher,

a sage so deeply committed to prophecy

your life turns golden as you speak

your hopelessly human habits turning to divine?

It is important to have one good face,

one good attitude you can count on for most occasions.

Any lawyer you hire can re-invent you,

can find the best way to present you.

You need to love the things you love at home,

stay indoors near a soft light,

closely watch your rooms,

know you can conjure up anyone if you think about it.

You suspect there may be dancing soon,

the dining room chairs will multiply, many more guests will be arriving,

though some may run away after ringing your doorbell laughing.

THE DAILY ROAMING

THE DAILY ROAMING

 susan ambrosino

You're looking for just the right color,

once it was mustard, then chartreuse, now baby blue swirling

in a warm brown chocolate that looks like

it's just about to melt,

but anything you think someone will want to touch,

or feels like April or looks like September,

especially if it happens to be January,

a floating fabric of simmering silk reflecting the emptiness,

wrapping the emptiness, gathering it in, covering it up.

It began with the earth, the roaming, the daily roaming,

plucking berries, seeds, digging deep,

eyes constantly looking, always hungry,

yes, the hunger was so necessary,

remaining close to the earth, remaining behind,

left by the men who hunt…..there it's been said,

devising a way for permanence, importance, stacking, nesting, storage,

let's go fill the apple basket so we can eat,

shoes, high heels, low heels, the new baby doll shoe, so cute,

whoever finds the best apples gets the best meat.

You'll take that sweater in all the colors it comes in.

GOALS

GOALS

 susan ambrosino

the fact of the matter is

if a cavity in your tooth needed filling

when you were 19

you had it done and paid the bill.

you didn’t have dental insurance

or any kind of insurance

didn’t have any of those sweet comforts

of middle age:

the upper income numbing pillows

of health insurance

life insurance

financial assurance

house insurance

gift unearned insurance.

if you sneezed there was no one to say God bless you

no my prayers are with you murmurs

were whispered

into your sleeping tucked-in face.

you were alone with the dust

in the corners of your rented room

something you would only casually notice

as you raced off eager

for anything that might come your way.

if you tore your only pair

of cool bell-bottom blue jeans

you threaded your one sewing needle

with a piece of thread

from the one dusty spool

you kept for emergencies

in a shoebox with some band-aides

a screwdriver and jumper cables

on a shelf near some paperback novels

dealing with philosophical issues

you were too young to understand.

ha ! what a combination !

jumper cables with philosophical novels.

not in the trunk of your Volkswagen Bug

where they might come in handy

some cold rainy night

on a dark curvy road without guardrails.

you never needed those jumper cables anyway

and you can’t remember

the titles of those books

and if you had been asked

so what are your goals ?

by a stranger on a Tuesday night in January 1970

in an amber lit bar on a quiet street

in a dreary river town in upstate New York

after it had snowed a mixture of mostly ice

and freezing rain all day

you would have answered with some more questions:

goals ?

what do you mean ?

what are those ?

WAR

WAR

 susan ambrosino

it could be your son out there

the son you still persist in believing

belongs to you

but doesn’t anymore.

when he was growing up

you were totally engrossed

in the delusion that you owned him.

he was totally engrossed

in who he was.

now…

that could be him out there¾

that young man so brave

and you’re sure so scared

but ready to die in the dust for the things

older men say he must die for.

does he know

it was you that sent him there ?

does he know

it was you

who relinquished his power ?

you sent him out to the barren desert sun

and many others like him

the innocent

the young

because who among your older men

possess the cavalier arrogance

of your young ?

who among your older men

still believe they are indestructible ?

none.

FROM A PLACE YOU'RE TALLER THAN

FROM A PLACE YOU'RE TALLER THAN

 susan ambrosino

When you're one person, one single woman,

having raised the accomplishment of yourself

to reach the age of fifty-nine still intact,

healthy, fit and never been arrested

finding yourself walking alone

feeling truly alone

looking at it all

from a place you're taller than,

you've become the glint of sun on a plane's wing

you're proudly aloft at the head of your class,

you're enjoying your own private surprise party,

attended by you and only you,

you're draped in communion white,

your hair has never been cut, and you know

if you let it down

you would never touch the ground again.

WHO IS IT THAT'S SPEAKING ?

WHO IS IT THAT'S SPEAKING ?

 susan ambrosino

You wake with a sentence engraved across

your forehead, it's a different one each day, a message or an omen,

an incarnation into Englishable understanding from somewhere unknown;

no wonder so many people mistake this for prophesy,

they think God speaks to them.

Five military planes flew over your house

as you laid in bed staring out the window thinking

about your morning sentence,

or was it the same plane circling five times, you can't know,

the sky overhead is too big for you to see where anything

is coming from, or going to.

The schools are growing opponents for future wars,

kindergarten teaches colors as opposites,

green can't sit beside orange, purple doesn't play with yellow, black

isn't white, we can never be comfortable, the fit isn't right.

Looking from your bedroom window you see a silvered cat catch

a small animal in its teeth and run off with it

between the Liriope and the Coreopsis,

its tortured last moments ending as you stare in disbelief.