[Newspoetry] Sharing Blankets?

[DL Emerick]

#3_beach blanket-bingo?
A protest(ant) movement...
Sharing blankets with an Other

As every married couple knows,
there are at least three phases...
first there is the pre-kid world,
usually a very brief phase,
where the house or home is yours,
where you are not woken in the night,
where you are not having to care for kids.

and then there is the kid-world,
where you and your wife become servants,
who happen to live in the master's house...
you might be married to each other,
but you could never tell it,
not based on any reliable statistics...

Marriage in its second phase,
a protracted engagement
stretches and wears you out,
as if all your being were on a rack,
as if there were no other point
to your ever being you.

And, then, there is a third phase,
the critical phase, as some say,
for there is no longer biologic to it:
there's no reproductive rationale --
the kids are out of the nest.

Now, having lived alone for so long,
you take a long look across the room,
and you see this other person,
sleeping there in your bed,
eating meals with you,
reading your paper,
sharing your tv --
and you wonder
who is she,
this stranger?

This is not the stranger I married,
this is not even the stranger
that my buddy Camus promised me
as a person out there like me,
caught up in existentiality.

More like, say, Sartre's motel,
or strangers in search of Paradise,
where neon signs outside flash,
glowing letters inverse written,
tixE oN, tixeon, as you mind
the anagrams and alternatives,
and settle on a last notice,
that there is no exit here,
so don't enter or you'll stay,
you'll stay as you come,
you'll come as you are,
all dressed up for a farewell party
that never chances an appearance,
just sighs and says "Ask Godot,
cause he's sure to know..."

So I read in Dear Abby on Friday,
of this guy who writes in,
saying he's near 50,
been married 29-30 years,
raising kids, working,
but now the kids are gone,
and there's nothing left
but the job of working,
both night and day,
first at the office,
and then at home
at a labor camp,
much larger and more destructive
than any Solzhenitzen mentions,
out in the Gulag of suburbia,
where the demoralized dwell,
in an empty shallow shell,
wishing they were going to hell,
if there's no heaven left to find.

And Dear Abby, dear me, says,
hey, guy, that's not fair nor just!
You can't end a marriage that way,
not like a business partnership
whose business purpose has been met,
where the partners now have nothing,
nothing left in common, but assets,
and years in which to conserve them.

Well, no guy writes like that --
a guy, Dear Absie, would say:
hey, move on, run for it
when the gold gives out!
Don't let yourself be trapped,
like an animal in a cage,
she quit playing the game years ago,
because she found chase scenes boring,
as she never had time to pursue you,
after she had stunned and bagged you,
tamed you and trained you.

Oh, I understand, in Dixieland,
the Masters never could understand
why some beaten down slave would run,
after many years of faithful service,
in a shuffling modest humility;
suddenly, he gets on a Freedom Train
at a hidden Underground Station,
and rides the rails, running.

In chess, when the game is over,
logically, one resigns from it --
there's no point to merely moving pieces
when the outcome is not in question --
and in stud poker, players may quit,
fold and retire when a hand is bad,
or simply not worth bluffing about --
and men invented white flags,
not merely for pleasant talks,
but for peace negotiations,
to bring a war to an end,
to let combatants cease their wars,
resume their abandoned pasts.

So, men do not think like Abby;
and she does not speak for them,
in exhibiting all her female biases,
all her prejudices against men,
for men, you must recall,
invented polygamy, not monogamy,
because they knew their women,
oh, rather far too well,
that women do better in competition,
and not after they win a prize,
especially a beauty prize.

And, men knew men, as well,
and knew most men were bad husbandmen,
because few are farming men who love
the care of animals and plants,
the constancy of a ruling love --
most men would just prefer
passing a moment in sharing,
before running on to some real fun,
playing with the guys in their games.

So, we live in a most fucked-up age,
where normalcy is perversely democratic,
each man equally has one woman,
as if equal rights applied well,
to the oldest question of family,
of whether all should have one,
and having made it one on one,
neither would have any other,
never, never never again.