Nature and Nurture
some prosetry by
Christopher Gregory Converse
I said it because love nurtured it.
Loquacious lug’s linguistic lubricant. They went into hiding like a turtle head, ostrich-sized. I was caught remembering a thought, it seemed I saw in my mommas eyes.
“Don’t you go mistaking your broken heart for love, nor somebody’s lust for being needed”.
I’ll do the dishes honey!!
Litter, trash, wrinkled receipts, tattered, scattered away today, in the predawn gusts, as life goes on and on…
So now I’m thinking it must have been the angel’s dust talking. Still out here, with nothing to fear. Walking off this last bout with squawking pneumonia.
And you’re right!!!
Your here is my there. I see reminders of your promise everywhere. New ones last week written in jet trails.
Circumstantially evident engravings in dent bent steel tables.
Are these imaginary memories?
Ma? Am I an accident waiting to happen? A mess making messes???
Still out here shivering in a sleeping bag of self pity. Complacent to the punctured tire’s letting, urgent hiss of lice’s advice. Whispering, "KEEP ITCHING!!!
So now I circle this town, hover like a cigarette butt buzzard, around a full ashtray moon. Red clay dipped wings.
Are these imaginary memories???
There’s your tiny hand around my pointer finger, while we carefully cross a street. Your curly mane messed from a twenty minute nap. I carried my two children six miles to see a Venus fly trap, in it’s natural habitat, long after my butterfly ate a stick of butter she absconded from the refrigerator, to break her sixteen hour fast. at four A.M. I heard her munching on all that fat.
Forgiveness…
Monster daddy didn’t mean,
to be so ugly.
Your momma drove off with you…
I remember fear for the first time taking hold of an entire life.
The last time we spoke, we became confused.
You ran wild at daycare,
waiting on daddy,
then screaming, “CANDY!!!”,
all the way home.
the gateway drug.
don’t forget to floss your fathers favorite flaw.
extra credit, fang.
just in case,
you mean to speak with speech impediments,
that I meant to teach you to defeat me with.
thru imprinting yet???
Silent treatment curtain,
sliding glass door, permanent marker censored, parenting handbook.
My beautiful baby butter stick crook!!!
These are real memories???
Child support extortion, homeless and walking, no rest, cottage’s absurd curdling cheese.
I’m waiting patiently, urgent, “please”! beg.
Did you forget to prove that you cared???
Defaulted rent, misspent, evictions noticed.
soused loaf, pickled, your fathers coat. Selfish doubt.
Christmas wish list. then your little sister born.
resistance. Through my itches come memories…
Blood curdling scream.
"DADDY!!!
Brown sugar, cinnamon, pumpkin bread.
Just a bunch of memories.
imaginary maybe…
One afternoon my little girl asked me to marry her when she grew up!!!
Lately nature is gnawing on me,
like a Sufi sand-witch style mystic,
drenched before a freeze.
Give it a wiggle.
lips chapped, stick.
convictions less abidance, more penitent, without the punitive.
misplaced her anger, slap in the face…
"You will not waste this life,
for lines or walls,
nor get transfixed,
by skies with translucent,
ceiling windows, that kill motive.
motif, melodic crescendo, with no time to regret,
the drums hit,
in a moment of magnificent motion!!!