May 5, 2010

• In Memorium - My Mother The Architect

  While writing elsewhere on Crystal Bowersox, I found that a part of her original work sends me looking for songs and poems about abusive mothers - not a particularly hot topic in the world of songwriters, but a powerful one.  Bowersox, on American Idol, has at least four original songs dealing with abuse, three directed towards "mother" with no way to know just how autobiographical they are until she is ready to speak about them.

  What I do know is that they are powerful, exquisitely written, played and sung, and treat a theme almost never dealt with in song. "Farmer's Daughter" is the best known of the three. "Mama" and "Flowers for Mother" are the other two.

  It is testimony to the strength of her writing that I cannot listen to these songs without bring drawn in, without relating them to my own life.  These songs and other things, including urging by a number of people, friends and strangers, to write down my story, have me thinking about my life, its modest successes and huge failures, the lives of my children...  Then someone reminded me of a poem I wrote several years ago, autobiographical, totally....

  I will be recording most of my poems next month, at the behest of and with the help of a composer/singer friend who heard me reading one while i was in the hospital and said she found herself moved by the voice, and the words and the music in the rhythms I set up.  She too suffered at the hands of her mother and wants to do this one first in the studio...

  In Memorium: Mother as Architect

  "The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor
  is the mind of the oppressed." *

  You knew.
  You knew that
  If you took my mind,
  When I was very young,
  Still suckling,
  Twisting it
  Till I was
  The old grey wrung out dishrag
  That rested on your sink,
  Bereft of beauty.
  Breaking desires
  Fragile as stems
  Of grandmother's crystal,
  Thrown against the wall,
  Until I had none.
  Wearing outdoor boots
  To crush that place
  We cannot locate
  Where living and synapses
  Collide, creating
  Who I am, or am not,
  Who I can ever,
  Who I can never be...

  You knew you could shape
  The groundwork.

  Craft it crooked to the east
  So that I would understand
  East winds will not bring peace,
  But pierce me
  In their storms.
  Break it off on the west side,
  So I'd fall
  When I walked there,
  And while falling,
  Drop and break
  What I tried to hold
  In safety,
  Like my children
  Or my heart.

  Slant it down towards north,
  So I could slide more freely
  Into hell,
  Knowing there was no other
  Safe and clear direction.
  South?
  I could never find the south
  With its sun and flowering trees
  I'd  heard about.
  I had no compass.
  Oh, you did it well.

  Still, I try to redesign,
  Remake, refine,
  The foundation
  Every day.
  With the sharp edges
  Of my heart,
  I try to excavate,
  Make flat
  Make smooth,
  Make safe
  An unvarnished little place
  Where I can live
  Till morning.

  pearlbamboo

  *Steven Biko

  © 2005

  • 3:23 am
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