LEARNING TO SMILE



"I follow Freud's opinion that at birth there is no consciousness, accordingly, there can be no awareness or conscious experience ... Thus it is rare to find the smiling response before the third month of life."
—Rene Spitz
(The First Year of Life: A Psychoanalytic Study of Normal and Deviant Development of Object Relations)


Floating in the sac
I sucked the blood of my mother's cigarettes.
Her breath fed me.

When kicking in her belly I began
to make my move, they rushed her
fast car & sirens
to a monolith of brick.
Laid her flat on a gurney
& wheeled her helpless
into the sterile room of deliveries.

We both felt the sudden vertigo
the whirl & loss
as the anaesthetic took effect.

Unconscious
drugged into dreams
she was made to push me
out of the house her body had been.

Unconscious
I slid head-first
into the assault of their bright lights
forceps, antiseptics.

A masked man held me captive
upside down.

Too soon his rubber gloves
cut the cord that pumped me
mother's air mixed with blood.

Too soon.
My face turning blue
asphyxiated, brain throbbing
until those brusque hands
hung me by my heels
& slapped the life into me.

Still groggy from the drugs
was it any wonder that I cried out
howling at the world?

Raw atmosphere jammed my lungs.
Silver nitrate burnt into my eyes.

I was born craving nicotine
& the smell of her skin.

But they hauled me away
to be tagged, guarded
& quarantined.

My own father, criminal with germs
allowed only a peek through glass
at his first-born son.

There in the nursery
tended by strange, masked women
I was given a blanket to calm my fear.

So my first bond was made
with impersonal cloth.

First comfort found in hugging the material
close around me
as later in times of stress I would grab hold
of objects as though they
could help soothe the loss & aching.

There in the arms of obstetrics
my heart dangling from the thread of
its own frightened beat, I slept
& slept & slept.

My body retreating into shock
that instinctual safety valve
releasing me
from the merciless onslaught of
modern technology.

And then they wondered
why I cried
when they hauled me back
to the birthsmell of the Mother.

Why I couldn't focus
& look her in the eye.

Why it was months
before I learned
to smile.

art goodtimes
union of street poets
vincent st. john local / colorado plateau / aztlán
kuksu brigade (ret.) / san francisco