L. A. Heberlein

Rahula, Siddhartha’s Son

I fail to comfort my mother once more
when I find her alone by the river,
water raining from her eyes
like a heavy morning raga.
Most exalted woman in six kingdoms,
daughter of the fattest merchant prince,
beauty marshaled from youth by a dozen attendants,
dark hair flowing now like night,
dark eyes seared in brine,
abandoned like a wench in a country inn,
counted less than dung
for the fire, left without
a backward glance . . .
as he left me as well.

How did I make him so sad?

Even dancing girls
who were not my mother
with whom he spent his nights
while my mother turned in bed alone
girls of cinnamon and cymbals
he could only see them rotting, prevision
their home in the ground, their
flesh rent and falling in sheets, how
he spoke of their stink.

Every bird betrayed him, each
leaf was not as he would have it.

His anger like the emptiness
of a thousand echoing caves.
I could never be enough for him,
the way I do not suffice for her now, her
son, who can never made that parched heart bloom,
make her stir and turn in opening anticipation.

If only I had been another sort of child,
studious, devoted. 
I broke whatever I touched,
could not sit still.
It was my place to make him
green again. 
What am I missing
that I could not give him?
And where can I find it
now that he is gone?

mechanical bird in angel-food cake under water

when the first cracks

appeared in the exo

skeleton

thin wavery

maybe a shadow

possibly scratch

but

no

cracks

he instantly read

the end in them

remembered everyone

he would like to have been

kinder

to

ballets undanced

operas never scored

cat

       too

       agi

       tated

       to be

       stroked

the fissures deepened

and widened the

plastic paled at the

edges a thick black

tar began to ooze

       what she said to her friends the next morning

       what you resolve when she leaves

he became

unwilling to defer

and yet his intensity

had a delicacy

like the almond aftertaste in a peach

rippling descant

backbeat snarl

a buzz on the strings

like the rattle

of an old man's voice

as he tells a young man

his surenesss will fade

find the door

knock till it opens

ask the question

don't believe the first six answers

L. A. Heberlein says: "I'm editor of the literary journal Square Lake and author of four books, most recently the novel Every Man Must Build a Home (Livingston Press). My poems have appeared most recently in Eclipse, Astarte, Lilies and Cannonballs, New Rag Rising, Rhapsoidia, The Rockhurst Review, and Edgar, where one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004."