April Madness 2018

viking funeral

the oil slips down the stairs -
drip, drip, plop, drip -
and puddles on the hardwood floor
in little black droplets,
mixing with the white drywall
spilled out like Jackson Pollock painting
on that long hallway to the front door
where the kids said bye to daddy in the morning
and tackled him in the evening.

but you wouldn't know that, would you?
you always slept in the closet under the stairs,
pretending you were a wizard
and thinking the world was one tear-stained corner
to the other, where you could live out any fantasy
if it meant dragons could carry you into their caves
and bury you in their gold,
because they thought you deserved
more than a whip or a belt.

and when the kids went off to college
and daddy focused his bloodshot third eye on you,
it was only a matter of time
before you stepped into the cockpit,
strapped on goggles over your eyes,
and pressed the red button on that joystick.

or, to say it better, you climbed onto your dragon,
grabbed onto it with your little scarred arms,
and told it to breathe fire.

if you still had eyes to see through,
or a body that didn't blow away in the wind,
I think you'd be proud to know
you are the greatest wizard of all time -
you killed the villain and escaped life,
the biggest closet of them all.

looking towards home


The strangest part about moving away
is how you can never quite return
like pressing leaves back where they once hung
a home once left, is left forever.
_____my fingers drag against thin layers of dust
_____already turning to rust and weighing me down
_____but it’s often easier to pretend nothing’s different
on the surface the scene seems so unchanged
same trees, same house, same people moving between
but just beneath it’s all altered. a quilt threaded through a combine.
and I try to ignore the parts that don't match memories
_____for better or worse there’s less to recognize
_____so eventually I stop looking. and just concentrate
_____on breathing. and search for myself in the unfamiliar.
but living lends clarity and more in the absences;
the lull in conversations once flowing so easily or
the empty picture frame. a chair set against the wall.
and these blank spaces add up and color the rooms darker.
_____and I can feel all the lost time, where time could not stop
_____because time always moves and moves forward.
_____and we move with it, whether or not we choose to.
I think of home now as less of an address or even a person
but a time in life, a memory, a moment that only happens once
conversations shared with shrill laughter, a hug before a long good bye
and the small moments and whispers and echoes I hear on and on and
_____as home changes and becomes something new
_____I trace the deeper weathered lines on my palms
_____and remember I have changed too.

our home basks in a twilight
the shade of wicker baskets. mother
holds the sun's warmth within her arms,
trickling through as she brushes our hair.

but soft is the crisscross of lighter thoughts
hatching from our father’s hand. hands
strong enough to hold the whole world
without trembling.

wilted flowers and withering leaves

petals falling off of
my flower
the leaves of it
withering
under the sun
burning and overheated
to a crisp
(will it ever be possible to revive me?)
no
i can never
for once a flower dies,
it dies.

i. 24

this illustrated calendar is 24 pages long.
every day has a name and number,
sun and moon;
a waxing gibbous when i loved you,
swollen and serene;
a waning hangnail on the dark night—

let's not talk about the dark night.
i loved you—

and this calendar is short.

24 is such a small number;
24 months i have not known you
but every day my heart twists
at the thought of coming home.

you are so far away now, but still
i would, for you, always.

#1: the fracture of being

And this, here, it speaks
So loud the echo passes by
Into the darkening tunnel behind.

I crouched there when i was six
Like a trilobite, limbs atrophied
My simple structure took on new meaning.

So outrageous was this untold form
By seven i was someone new,
I sent the address by post.

You welcomed me in the new state
And collided lip to jaw,
The traditional greeting of our people

And i did not miss this.
I swallowed the world whole
And returned to you all grown

(and i did not miss this,
echoing into the darkness,
i was someone new)

You look at me as if I was the sun
Squinting at me in anger,
yet always wanting me to come back.

I don't understand it,
and neither do you.
You say you love me,
then hide me away in shame.

I've made it so dark for you lately,
haven't seen you since January.
And I don't plan on seeing you again
So I hope you aren't afraid of the dark.

Tales always unlock
the hearts of lives they tell,
sometimes even till I can recognize them
even if they are turned inside out.
I would love to clap my hands
against their hands and tell them,
I know you even though you are realms away.

It is just that some wishes are as wispy as fading dreams,
because they are in a place
both too near and too far
for me to reach.

Sometimes the only way to know a tree
is to cut it down and count its rings.
Yet by the time I understood
every word and thought inscribed in its being,
it had crossed a bridge and left me
standing in its wake.

I wrote a message to the tree,
on paper in the hopes that my words
would pierce through a bit of its soul.
The echoes haunting me later is a reminder
of how futile it is
to whisper into the ear of someone you once loved.

Building Blocks

Gently guide me down beneath the waves of paragraphs, drifting through my brain as signals I categorize, recognize, synthesize to a universe dancing upon the cusp of written tongues, the dreams of scrawled words are as real as my fingers tasting the page, which is not a page at all, a touch screen. How books have changed.

When we were young we used to look at books as building blocks for stairs to get on counters, as things to grab and shake like rattles, and then as mysteries when we began to recognize and symbolize our sounds. Books were Mommy Time and Daddy Time and Granpa and Granma Time and Bed Time before we knew the reality of time, the lack of it,

the suffocation.

Could you read this to me? I like the pictures. "Have you seen my cat?" and we would answer, "No, ... " as the play began again, and again, until you shunned it, a groaning growl, a misplacement of our treasure. Too quickly, "You're old enough to read yourself" as if that was the same. As if somehow reading without you could amount to more than your soothing voice, sitting next to you, watching the pictures dance within our minds.

No, please, I want you to read it to me. I want you close to me. I don't want to read. I don't want to know how you get the same story time after time, a story I had to memorize to repeat, a story I change like water in different cups. These signals are alien to me and

Please, come back. Please, make time.

As if time were not a measurement of history or future, these things we cannot see, cannot sense directly.

Please, I miss you. We used to have time to read together when I was too little and thought these things were building blocks instead of books building into universes all our own, like the one where you still read to me, where you spend time with me as I know it is something to spend, not make.

I miss you.

the house smells like tradition
(though we're in the wrong place at the wrong time)
because no matter how far divorced we fall
from the things grandpa tried to teach us
we still remember sedar's past
of reading haggadah (pretending to listen,
between the cries of "not the fish!" and
the arguments over the last matzoh ball)
and spoons falling into bowls,
because spring means pesach and soup and
chosen family, no matter how irreverent we've become.

like any other person, i find myself only knowing a few things.
some i may believe to be true and others are simple lies,
put up feelings, that only mask what really needs to see the light.

the light came to me and i thought that i would see it,
but it left quickly, like everything else that has ever come
to me. they all leave, no matter what form they take when
gracing this land. whether they are in the shape of a man or
hide behind the falling limbs as the canopy of oaks breaks upon me.

one of the sayings that i think to be a fiction, is that of
“don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
as if to dream, that i have more than one thing to offer.

i have nothing to give to this world.
this is a statement i think to be a fact,
those around me try to prove that it is a fiction.
they aim to say that when i think bad things about myself,
those words are nothing but fiction.
i still believe that they are facts.

i struggle each day to find the facts in the fiction,
all the words that may surround and tempt me.
but the only thing i continue to find is the lack of trust,
the lack of feeling, that makes me like no other person,
knowing even fewer things about myself.