Oedipus Rants

“Call your mother, she left another
message,” his secretary said.
Oedipus Singleton stood erect,
and felt the blood rush from his head.
Today I’m a man, but not a man,
Oedipus thought, pulling his tie.
So he went on with soliloquy:
I am a free man, yet tied to Mom;
like a free bird, yet caged upstairs
with only enough sunlight for moths 
to flitter along, half alive.
Like a letter shoved under the door,
lanced by a matriarchal blade,
filed tightly in a metal drawer,
edges dogeared by decisive thumbs.
Oh, another message from Mom
as if my ears are the viaducts
for her every whim and whisper,
for hemp rope made tight around my waist,
and the pulling that Mother needs, 
like the ache of ancient ancestors
that is love, or lust, or regret,
or that which makes a caterpillar
spin a cocoon longing for spring.
I am just the dank, cold smell of Earth
confined in a nutshell of anger,
spinning like a galaxy spins long,
raging like flood-water madness.
To flee, or not to flee?  My question
ricochets like canyon bullets,
like the gongs of golden bells within.
I am too lax to make my stand,
to cut that cord like I was saber;
or if my words were sharp enough
to cut the very air like paper 
shredded by an act of courage.
And so I sink like lead in quicksand,
a weight still in my mother’s womb,
awaiting further bolts and triggers
arming me like I’m her weapon.


40 Lines 
Writer’s Cramp 
10-10-17