Good deeds, not words

Good deeds, not words, you write and I
get a whiff of who you are, just a whiff, a tang
of upper lip sweat and talcum-powdered
armpits and generations of dustbunnies
under the bed and Love’s Baby Soft and
urine, yes, I said, urine.

You are the silence that hangs in the air
fifteen days after my last email to her,
twenty-two months after my last email
to them. You are the last pompom to descend
at the pep rally, sliding down the front of
a sweat-stained red-and-white uniform.

It’s always red and white, you see. Those
two, they like to duke it out. The bloody
and the prim, the flayed and the pure.

Good deeds, not words. Yes,
thank you, dear. I will surely keep that
in mind as I navel-gaze, that other
thing we tiresome writer-types do. You say.

Blessed are those who use the term
“navel-gazing,” for they shall discover
their own navels someday in the bath.
The question:
Will they dare to finger them?

It is disastrous to write, not dance. It is
catastrophic to articulate pain through pen
rather than savage leap—or the jagged
breath that follows.

There is a statute of limitations, if not on
grief, then on sharing one’s grief. Do you
still hurt? Enough to scrutinize the sharp?
To nod at the solemn soldiers of pill bottles
standing in regiment? To know you could
swallow their strength!

Save yourself. Say nothing more.
Two, three, years have passed. Good
deeds, not words. Prepare to disgust,
dare to disgust if you tell the truth, that
you are not better, that better has gone
on and on and on without you.

Create a new life, if you can. If you can’t,
well, you will deal with that in time. For
now, roll your eyes at the cat when you
read, “Good deeds, not words” from a
stranger, and wonder what Keats or Yeats
or Piercy or Munro or Plath or Styron—
alive, dead, does it matter?—
would have to say about that.

Back of the bus, apparently, for writers
having a shit time, and telling the shit
truth. Perhaps the truth is never a good
deed. Is this the problem, my friend?

I know a writer—guess—who showed her
crying daughter a typo the music teacher
had made: tits instead of it’s.
I’d call this a good deed, because the
child stopped crying and laughed.

Bad word, good deed.
Don’t assume that your favorite
treacherous, navel-gazing,
shiftless writer is without good deed,
is deedless, is without action.

Acts of valor? A child’s birthday
party. Balloons. A freelance job,
writing about greeting cards.

Perseverance? She opens her
eyes at 6:48 a.m. and gently
arouses her children from sleep,
then lets her old red dog out
to pee. Urine, friend. Salt and
water, salt and water.

Watch now: she leaps heavily,
spins once, badly, twice,
then tries to boil your
words and her own away
in a cup of tea
when you, friend,
are not there,
and never will be.