Ambiguous Impressions (circa 1998 or 99)

I have known the vanity of sex
without the presence of love
And the vanity of narcissistic rapture
And the vanity of recognizing one's own
mirror reflection
And the vanity of pierced eyebrows
And the vanity of hedonistic nihilism
Souls resonating with cries of monetary gain
and accessories
And I ask: do we embrace rectitude with reverence
and vigor
Or turn a cold shoulder
perhaps superseding with new moral fiber
and spiritual paragon,
worn pendulous for the world to see as proclamation
I have known the vanity of my own
seriousness
I have known the vanity of intellect as well as
ignorance
And rarely am I able to differentiate the two
as that of the subliminal and oblivious
And we are the vain in the presence
of the innocent world we smear cold
with surreptitious resentment
And refuse to negotiate

A mother lactates, rocking gently in her swing,
on a crippled porch
Her newly born gropes greedily
for her inflamed nipple exposed
from the security of her cotton
chemise
Bright eyed and bush tailed,
finding solace in breast
warm with flowing blood
and swollen with milk
He is nourished with vanity,
before his first step-
His first uttered word-
He learns of the importance of desire
of the need to quench thirst
and fill the void of hunger
and by all means
do scratch that itch tickling
your bruised knee
Mother,
chilled by moaning zephyr
and abruptly disturbed out of tranquility
by the dancing soliloquy of the
nearing sunrise
moves to robe her nakedness-
pulling herself from his tender/ yearning
lips soiled
that perk intensely to wail and chastise
Restive,
he tries to kick out of his mother's cuddling arms
Undaunted,
he remains the object of her affection
Years later,
mother spends a blissful night dancing
along a peaceful rivulet,
under a casual moon and starless sky
leaving her son, now eleven, home
to frolic amongst bounteous bouquet of
flowers
At a drifting dawn, watching a kaleidoscopic sky
she skips home,
encouraged by her copy of
Baldwin's Go Tell It On A Mountain
to find her child, raging with hunger
Realizing the error of her...