70spoems/compromise

THE COMPROMISE

My life is total
intention. I know
what I am doing.
Self-negating decisions
and their subsequent
acts breed bitterness,
put strain in the face.
Take kitchen knife to self,
shape to dimensions of
cultural realities and
societal demands. Still
I know what it is I am
doing. And why. My life
is total intention.
This fairy dust lady says
my poems are hard, angry
cynical. I say fairy
dust is poison. Sold on
street corners and
peddled to school children,
has long made crying cripples
of women and compulsive
adolescents of us all.
And compromise comes,
sometimes with calm,
just as often with knotted
stomachs and grasping, drowning
hands. My mother is dead.
And I must survive. My milk
dried up, my babies
hollow eyed, hungry.