the fish market

fish eyes blind
surveying bloody cobbles
blood of fish
of whipping boys
of those never
given a chance
corners of gypsy
sirens, soot blackened
lids and lashes
flashes of lace
under skirts
vaginas already
plowed, and
sown with seed
seed uprooted
wiry abortions spilling
fishy messes trod
under heels of
oh well. whoops!
and, so what?
quickening hearts
stopped in midbeat
eyes as white blind
as those of the fish.

For about the first three months of each of the pregnancies of my younger two children, I prayed for miscarriages. Frankly I feel this makes me no better than the people who get abortions willingly. I'm not talking about the ladies forced into them, all in the name of love of course, by significant others who wield love like a crushing hand. Or for people raped. There are some Catholic hospitals where nuns will give the Morning After pill to rape victims. The Vatican says that that practice should be stopped. I guess if I were a good little Catholic I would unwaveringly swallow that edict and love that nasty taste. Seems I'm not a very good Catholic. I also realize that there can sometimes be extenuating circumstances where a woman feels that an abortion is the only option. Sometimes they are just too ignorant to ask the right people for answers. Ignorance can often be forgivable state of mind. No. This is my anger for the kids, yes fucking kids, who know nothing of real life. They are given everything. Mommy and Daddy will provide all. You know, the car, the sexy underwear, the plastic surgery, the fuel so that their little hunnies can travel from town to town following screaming performers, all for that all-American roll in the hay. Fucking idiots. Then in the aftermath any and all problems are taken care of. Oh dear! A problem? Ma and Pa will take care of that. When it's done, they pat manicured hands, reveal that in the interim they bought their little darling a new thong, a tank full of gas. After all, wouldn't want to miss that show next weekend. That is real life, according to them. They are handed everything, and then complain at the hardness of it all.
I had some very promiscuous foster sisters from time to time. One was that way because she was poor and didn't know any better. One of the girls had come home from school with her little brothers to discover that their mother had put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Then she had crawled under the only bed they had to die. Their apartment consisted of a single room. Only one. So the smear of blood that led under the bed was noticed immediately. I guess their mother felt she had nothing to hide any longer. Anyway, the three kids were split up, and she rarely got to see either of her brothers. This girl was driven by a need for acceptance, and shelter, the coldness of being in the system, the lack of interaction with her brothers and therefore a way to hold onto her past, as poor as it had been, and when you are a teenager if you don't screw around with a boy he's liable to leave you just like your mother did. Right? Just not quite in the same fashion. I loved her, and pity moved me to cover for her more than I should have. But I was seventeen, so much older than her fourteen years (haha), and hugely pregnant with Sean. I myself had only slept with one person, in fact I still have only slept with one person. I didn't understand the need to sleep with just anyone willing enough, I hardly understand it now.
But anyway...all those arrogant, self-absorbed, slutty, obnoxious, spoiled bastards and bitches. This one's for you. That bloody smear leading under the bed is something that you know nothing about. And for those who never had a chance, or felt they didn't, this is for you as well. But mostly...it's for that deplorable part of myself. I am glad my prayers for miscarriages went unanswered back then. I would be missing out on two of the best experiences of my life.
Curiouser and Curiouser, life goes on, with all the stumbles, all the dirty marketplaces, all the questions waiting for answers, all the discarded socks and shoes to trip over in the night, and all those streams full of water coursing toward a fuller sea. Is there a further edge of that sea? A chasm of dark nothing, and a drop so long as to never have an end? A sign there reading, "Here there be beasts", in the Olde Tongue? I dunno. I do know that there are plenty of beasts not aborted. And plenty of beasts who abort responsibility. With skin of man, and two legs to walk the earth and soil it. And yet, life goes on. And for the most part is definitely much more than worth it.