The birthday that even time forgot

What is this subterfuge, this deceit,

this falsehood? Is it the meat defrosting 

on the countertop or a clap of thunder

on a stormy night?

My mother reaches out for a Gemini, 

a sister
(and  not the Greek, not the Stoic,

not the philosopher, not the poet)

gripped by the clay hands of Europe

My mother turns (albeit clandestine) into a 

statue in her bed

(my mother and father sleep in separate beds)

While I am masked by discontent

I give but there is no one to receive my love

Except the broodvraers and the children,

the pale niece and academically gifted nephew

I reach for the sun and wait for it to 

burn me up

                  Birthday, you are nothing

but a worm, a stubborn ventricle. The years,

they pass me by solemnly. My mother 

comes with breakthroughs, intent and 

intelligence, the frailties of life that I

inherited from her, cosmic dust under 

her feet, and so she comes

to life. Without acknowledging me, she 

floats into the bathroom to do her ablutions,

and put her mascara on. There is no food 

in the house

There is no mother-love. There is no 

birthday cake, no jubilation. There is 

only sadness. Sadness and oranges in a basket 

in the sitting room that I am not allowed

 to touch because it is for show. My sister, 

oh, well, does not wish me.

She does not say the words I long  to hear,

the words that will make me forgive her 

long silences. Happy  Birthday. She has no reason 

to speak to me and then, just then, a rhizoid

forms in my heart. This rhizoid is made of

dark matter. 

The same matter the universe is made

of (dark matter). The church grows in 

my spirit man, at the seat of Gary 

Zukav’s soul, and while I turn into a 

silhouette 

of the past, I think of my childhood, and my inner

child waving goodbye to me. I think of 

Goethe, Rilke, Thomas Mann. I think 

of the Freedom Fighters in Gaza, I think

of the brain rot of my clinical depression 

 and regain 

my strength, and the language of breath 

is slowly returned to me.