Good deeds, not words
Good deeds, not words,
you write and I get a whiff of who you are,
just a whiff, a tang of upper lip sweat and
talcum-powdered armpits and generations
of dustbunnies under the bed and Love's
Baby Soft and urine, yes, I said, urine.
You are the silence that hangs in the air
fifteen days after my last email to her,
twenty-two months after my last email to them.
You are the last pompom to
descend at the pep rally,
sliding down the front of
a sweat-stained red-and-white uniform.
It's always red and white, you see.
Those two,
they like to duke it out.
The bloody and the prim,
the flayed and the pure.
Good deeds, not words. Yes,
thank you, dear. I will surely
keep that in mind
as I navel-gaze, that other
thing we tiresome writer-types do.
You say.
Blessed are those who use the term
"navel-gazing," for they shall discover
their own navels someday in the bath.
The question: Will they dare to finger them?
It is disastrous to write, not dance.
It is catastrophic
to articulate pain through pen
rather than savage leap—or the jagged
breath that follows.
There is a statute of limitations,
if not on grief, then on sharing one's grief.
Do you still hurt?
Enough to scrutinize the sharp?
To nod at the solemn soldiers of
pill bottles standing in regiment? To know
you could swallow their strength!
Save yourself. Say nothing more.
Two, three, years have passed.
Good deeds, not words. Prepare to disgust,
dare to disgust if you tell the truth,
if you keep telling it,
that you are not better, that better has gone
on and on and on without you.
Create a new life, if you can. If you can't,
well, you will deal with that in time. For now,
roll your eyes at the cat when you read,
"Good deeds, not words" from a stranger,
and wonder what Keats or Yeats or Piercy
or Munro or Plath or Styron—
alive, dead, does it matter?—
would have to say about that.
Back of the bus, apparently,
for writers having a shit time,
and telling the shit truth.
Perhaps the truth is never a good deed.
Is this the problem, my friend?
I know a writer—guess—who showed her
crying daughter a typo the music teacher
had made: tits instead of it's. I'd call this
a good deed, because the child stopped
crying and laughed.
Bad word, good deed.
Don't assume that your favorite
treacherous, navel-gazing,
shiftless writer is without good deed,
is deedless, is without action.
Acts of valor? A child's birthday party. Balloons.
A freelance job,
writing about greeting cards.
Perseverance? She opens her eyes at 6:48 a.m.
and gently arouses her children from sleep, then
lets her old red dog out to pee. Urine, friend.
Salt and water, salt and water.
Watch now: she leaps heavily,
spins once, badly, twice,
then tries to boil your
words and her own away
in a cup of tea
when you, friend,
are not there,
and never will be.
you write and I get a whiff of who you are,
just a whiff, a tang of upper lip sweat and
talcum-powdered armpits and generations
of dustbunnies under the bed and Love's
Baby Soft and urine, yes, I said, urine.
You are the silence that hangs in the air
fifteen days after my last email to her,
twenty-two months after my last email to them.
You are the last pompom to
descend at the pep rally,
sliding down the front of
a sweat-stained red-and-white uniform.
It's always red and white, you see.
Those two,
they like to duke it out.
The bloody and the prim,
the flayed and the pure.
Good deeds, not words. Yes,
thank you, dear. I will surely
keep that in mind
as I navel-gaze, that other
thing we tiresome writer-types do.
You say.
Blessed are those who use the term
"navel-gazing," for they shall discover
their own navels someday in the bath.
The question: Will they dare to finger them?
It is disastrous to write, not dance.
It is catastrophic
to articulate pain through pen
rather than savage leap—or the jagged
breath that follows.
There is a statute of limitations,
if not on grief, then on sharing one's grief.
Do you still hurt?
Enough to scrutinize the sharp?
To nod at the solemn soldiers of
pill bottles standing in regiment? To know
you could swallow their strength!
Save yourself. Say nothing more.
Two, three, years have passed.
Good deeds, not words. Prepare to disgust,
dare to disgust if you tell the truth,
if you keep telling it,
that you are not better, that better has gone
on and on and on without you.
Create a new life, if you can. If you can't,
well, you will deal with that in time. For now,
roll your eyes at the cat when you read,
"Good deeds, not words" from a stranger,
and wonder what Keats or Yeats or Piercy
or Munro or Plath or Styron—
alive, dead, does it matter?—
would have to say about that.
Back of the bus, apparently,
for writers having a shit time,
and telling the shit truth.
Perhaps the truth is never a good deed.
Is this the problem, my friend?
I know a writer—guess—who showed her
crying daughter a typo the music teacher
had made: tits instead of it's. I'd call this
a good deed, because the child stopped
crying and laughed.
Bad word, good deed.
Don't assume that your favorite
treacherous, navel-gazing,
shiftless writer is without good deed,
is deedless, is without action.
Acts of valor? A child's birthday party. Balloons.
A freelance job,
writing about greeting cards.
Perseverance? She opens her eyes at 6:48 a.m.
and gently arouses her children from sleep, then
lets her old red dog out to pee. Urine, friend.
Salt and water, salt and water.
Watch now: she leaps heavily,
spins once, badly, twice,
then tries to boil your
words and her own away
in a cup of tea
when you, friend,
are not there,
and never will be.
posted by Jenn at 11:08 PM
4 Comments:
"...that you are not better, that better has gone
on and on and on without you.
Create a new life, if you can. If you can’t,
well, you will deal with that in time."
I love this. I love your way of writing. Thank you so much for sharing your life and your beautiful words, even when both are full of the hard things so often. Lots of love from one navel-gazer to another.
Having dared to share "real" thoughts on Facebook, I have been taught that my "friends" prefer false, happy, fluff. I guess the deep thinking needs another venue, but I don't blog, so the dark stuff stays in my head. Your gift (one of many I suspect) is the ability to take the ooze and wrap it in beauty. This post is proof of that. You took the sting of a critical comment and turned it into poetry, and that my dear, qualifies as a mighty deed. To understand that you write through the pain of your illness and the crappy hand you've been dealt only magnifies the deed in my mind.
Blessed are those who use the term
"navel-gazing," for they shall discover
their own navels someday in the bath.
The question: Will they dare to finger them?
Holy! Did this ever take me back to a time when my navel was the greatest toy I had to play with. (Before puberty, quite obviously, but let's not get into THAT!) I fingered my belly button incessantly, until a time I was visiting my grandparents and my grandfather would yell out, "Ding-a-ling-a-ling!" every time he saw me do it.
It didn't cure me of the habit, but I certainly became more circumspect about it. Something we navel-gazing introverts are exceptionally good at!
Your words are your good deads. How could anyone read what you've written and not understand that? Your words are powerful and beautiful, don't ever forget that.
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