as I sit here pondering about life writing furiously and aimlessly, I am constantly interrupted by the screaming and yelling in the living room my mom's telling my dad her life story at the top of her lungs like she does to everybody - she - the way she expresses her life is filled with sharp shrieks and stresses and empahsis as her life did as I sit here still wondering about literature the beakniks and esoteric miscellaneous matters like that, my mother started to increase the magnitude of her voice as if with the door shut to my room, she was scared that I wouldn't hear her story or get her sentiments - or that they werent loud enough or strong enough my mother knows that I am writing poetry again and she, by her screams, expresses her mockery and scorn she is saying, "see, all your poetry is for rats, it means nothing to me - for all your pretty words written down on paper, and all your metaphors, all your analogies - smiles and intellectual crap are bullshit and my 9-5, my pain and the migrane that I suffer and the shit that I have to put with everyday so that you could go to college, all of that is real." all of that is real and not pretty And finally after she howls her last cry, one last desperation, my mother grows quiet (is she helpless - does she feel helpless for her cirumstances? or is she tired from the day in and day out of American Blue Collar 9 to 5 that no matter how hard she tries, she's always stuck in this little stupid pathetic deadend shitpile that she just can't take anymore this desperation that she can't help) I am pondering about life and poetry in my room next to the living room where my mom sits and my pen is moving across the page - it hasn't stopped since my mother has stopped and my mother hasn't stopped because life isn't like poetry and ends after a couplets of lines but goes on everyday long after the resonance of the words of the last line of a poem is felt tommorrow my mother still has to get up and in her strained back and make effort to go to work and carry boxes after boxes of mail and packages at the post office the pain and the anguish of her boring mundane meaningless stupid unpretty daily routine that she wanted to do but is forced to in order to make a living is the stuff of poetry the gritty and the grime sometimes I feel mad at the society for forcing my mother to being this, mad at my mother her perennial yelling and carping at her miseries, mad at myself for I cannot help her in this great American ghetto or rather, help myself escape sometimes it suffocates me too that never mind the fact that I am just sitting here writing on paper - writing aimlessly and furiously - that with my door shut I am pondering about poetry and life and pretty words Like you too mom I need to shout at the top of my lungs - voice as cacophonous as yours to realse the discontent pain desperation angst that I feel just as you do the daily grind feelings of hopelessness that you yourself have vocalized so well that I borrow to use in my evocation eulogy of my souless soul and to seek somehow somewhere the redemption that was robbed from us both - I write poetry as you shout as you sleep as you get up and strains to go to work - to cope.