Neopoet.com

Each tiny patter,
every muffled clang,
is magnified to measure up
with the sirens screaming
rotten infancy; shoved beneath
the curtain,behind the
smothering rug; the short
and pudgy fingers can barely
tug at it’s mother’s breast. 
I feel sorry for the newborns,
trapped in some cosmic comic,
the punch line
for the humor of the universe,
tilting back and forth,
expanding with gusts of
laughter.
  

    all I hear are the babies
atop shelves of blue and pink, with
some soft green for the confused,
the ones caught in between
masculine and feminine, are
aligned orderly, unlike
the ward down the street in the
thick concrete structure; you
can find some of the wailers
in the parking garage: level 5,
section C.  Her stomach is
scarred, sliced down the middle
with a kitchen knife and tied
together with rusty strings.  I
can’t lift a finger, or provide
anything promising, because their
questions weren’t dialed collect,
   
    and all I hear are the babies,
keeping me from sleep. I have a
headache all day.  Tiny men are
chiseling my skull and dancing
in circles to Muzak, and they’re
dizzy and falling, slipping down
my eyelids and pulling them closed
like the cheap, plastic window covers
from the house I grew up in.  And
they snap back up like rubberbands
on wheels.  The squeaky, crooked
wheels of the carriage, the sucking
noise of lips and bottle tips, the
static feedback from the monitor:
noise machines, eardrum predators.
Every rattle shake is thunder,
every gurgle is a deafening,
industrial drain.  Others might speak,
instruments may resound,
   
    but all I hear are the babies,
even the kicking and squirming
in the womb.  The fetal joints bending,
amniotic fluid sloshing, cursing and
causing me to overreact and
wander in a wide-eyed state.  There’s
no escape, no secrets beneath the floor
boards, and all of these bookcases
are as they appear.  The only medicine
is to wait out the years, until they are no
longer babies, but toddlers throwing fits,
then drunk teenagers leaving vomit
on the carpet; the jailbait whores
skulking on sidewalks abandoned.
No refunds if you contract a disease,
there’s no exchange policy for
pregnancy.  There’s no end to the
cycle, the earshot assassin recycling,
reusing, rebirthing, re-screaming
life cycle.