Dayenu

If I only had that shiver
rushing down my spine
as we kissed in the early drizzle
of a late London evening,
oblivious to that departing bus,
Dayenu.
If I only had the catch in my throat
as I spilled oceans of words
and you caught them
and held them safe,
Dayenu.
If I only had the parting of my chest,
dividing to let you in,
Dayenu.
If I only had the heat,
a brushfire tinting
my joyous cheeks,
Dayenu.
Dayenu.

"Dayenu" means "it would have been enough" and is part of the passover seder commemorating the exodus. 

Single, with a couple of poems

1

I want to pick up those fragments
of final words
Sweep them away
as you swept me away
so they cannot pollute
all the words that
loved me.


2

With one match
I can set
your Valentine's Day gift on fire
Feel the warmth in my hands
And imagine
you're holding me
Watch the dancing flame
cast shadows
Kissing the walls
Hold onto this dream
as it falls

Reflecting

My dictionary sits on my chest
a choking brick
friction against my breasts
and still
in that weight
there are too few words,
Scrabble tiles spilled
beyond rearrangement,
with too few letters left
to spell out how I miss you.


Breaking up is the only part of a relationship where mutual consent seems no longer to hold a central place. Perhaps that is why, after so much honesty, caring, checking in and double-checking, the silence when this dissolves feels like such a betrayal even though she did nothing wrong. Sudden, and unilateral, and two weeks later I am left digging out the splinters left behind.

Long nights

There are nights, sometimes,
when your toothbrush
feels too familiar,
alive and serpentine,
dangerously caressing your gums.
The years fold up
like an acordion
exhaling, no breath left
to bellow in rage
at the origami map,
smoothing present over past,
past over present,
taste over taste,
over sound, smell, breath,
breathing in the crumbling aftershocks,
the choking synapses.

Don't Lie

Among the most infuriating things that the trolls I was arguing with this week said were "don't lie" and "stop lying." I was thinking about how much that phrase is used as a way of silencing survivors. This poem is the result.

***

Don't lie.
Don't lie, they said.
Don't lie; don't lie in the dust,
crushed,
hair so blended with sand
it looks ashen.

Don't lie.
Don't lie down, curled in bed
in a cave that has
no true protective power.
Don't lie when you can't
face the day.

Don't lie, they said.

Don't lie; don't lie in that casket
face flat as the newspaper picture,
printed last week: "missing"
now wrinkled, forgotten.
Don't lie.

Don't lie silently in waiting
don't lie as we hang
on the gallows you built;
don't lie beside us as we hang silently.
Silently, those words,
they silence us: don't lie.
Don't lie down and weep
on the courtroom floor,
any sense of justice suctioned out,
suffocating.

Don't lie.
Don't lie so quietly
he'll think you're sleeping
so you're safe.

Don't lie. Don't lie.
Don't lie; no, lie legs apart
(keep them still; they're shaking)
no, not like that;
lie still as a corpse.
Didn't the magazines
say not to fight?

Don't lie.
Don't lie on our graves.

Happy Halloween?

Let's play dress-up.
Dress like princesses;
long hair, flowing,
to cover handprint bruises
shadowy wings unfurling
around our necks.

Sparkling tiaras meet no reflection
in the ghost towns
of abandoned mines,
dank shafts nestled behind
moist contact lenses.

Eat daintily, for the memory
of flesh intruding in our mouths
makes the stomach, the
esophagus spasm
while the tongue flatlines.

Silk gloves hide the blood
the tangled, creeping vines
etching crimson scars on stone.

Dresses are a shield; so complex
their hands must walk a labyrinth
to find us inside.

Perfume masks the scent
of the place inside, where
serpents visit, swallowing,
swallow, just swallow,
swallowing everything,
leaving only the peel and
the core to rot (slowly, sweetly).

Stand tall; walk gracefully
eyes up, smile and wave.
Stand tall on your feet
shackled and devoured.

Stand tall, princess.
Stand tall; they'll never know.

Recompression

Today I attended a writing workshop entitled "writing from the ugly." Somehow, this was the result.

I
Futuristic dinosaurs
puncturing
rusty metal, broken glass
crashing crosshatch.
It's a way out,
lifting boxes that dwarf us
lego bricks of giants
the stones in a corporate fort.

Fortitude; walls so high
we cannot know them.
Firewalls. Robocalls.

We are, perhaps, every one of us a fraud.
I often proofread to realize I've misspelled "privilege"
painted on a box
held aloft, then dropped
by futuristic dinosaurs.

II
Plastic dinosaurs; the
offspring, reincarnated
the devolution of evolution
figurines without revolution
stoic and immobilized
spectators of our fear.

III
If I dig,
perhaps I will find fossils under these lines
some formation of bones
to fracture the silence.
Fissures, scratched
in invisible ink.
Shining in sunlight,
white skin in ridges
upon white skin.

IV
Last week, I think, someone told me
that a triceratops was never real,
but simply a combination of disjointed bones
mistakenly reunited.
When they reconstruct our bodies
how will they weld together
the skeletons of survivors?

V
There are tales we tell
a land before time, that
sugarcoat the past.
The pink smiles of cartoons
buried in the sand
metamorphizing and jailed
in liquid crystals
that distort their screams.

VI
Deafeningly silent applause
of arms too short for action
a flailing distraction
from garburating jaws.

VII
Hollow plastic, bobbing
herbivorous heads
intermittently visible
perpetually vulnerable;
a neck so fine is always on the line.
A body too big to be hidden
whispers "no" like it's fierce
and forbidden.

VIII
One day,
will our compacted remains
and the detritus of our veins
be fossil fuels
historic tools
and lifeblood for the dinosaurs?

I will be honest here; this poem is 100% about a cat.

It was.
And you might be a cloud
silently shifting
a soft shadow in the night.
Your silky backbone
under my thumb
that traces circles,
never spelling out
what was.

It was.
And it shattered your energy
drawing it up
as a shape in the atmosphere.

It was.
And you are a cloud.

Triumph Street

I've been working on writing more poetry lately (most recent one before this is a love poem that is frankly too sappy for public eyes!). This poem arose during a writing workshop at A-Camp this past weekend; I have edited it significantly, although I do still feel like it is too rhyme-y for what I would like it to be.

Bag with a beer can
tossed in the trash
leaking; dented
a kick in the ass
Legacies of neverland
crumble slowly in my hand.

Head out of the sand.
Head into the sand.

Tinkerbell drowns in a wishing well.
Her daughter crowns
with a decaying smell.
This woman's hell;
no hope in hell.

Emotions wane.
           Emotions wane.
Chilling rain pounds a dulling refrain.
Exposure makes grotesque mundane.

Clattering re-homed shopping carts
gather the seams
of broken hearts
that seldom matter
around these parts.

Bleeding starts.
Bruising smarts.

Heels glistening
Have I stopped listening?
Dulled to the beat
of blistered feet
working this street
behind my street.

In plastic bags
the bottles clink,
collide, and deride
her brink; his drink.
Do not meet eyes; it makes you think.
     Surprise
                Disguise
                           Demise.
Don't blink.

A severed shoe.
An upturned cart.
No money for glue
to heal the heart.
Wheels spin on an upturned cart
singing the dissonance of a world apart.

The more I run
the less I feel.
The less I feel
the less it's real.
It isn't fair. I care. I care.
I care.

A beautiful poem

It's been ages since I've posted, but I just have to share this beautiful piece I stumbled across tonight:

Alterations: A Monologue

The rest of her blog has some good stuff, too.

<3 br="">

Little children

 Same old story; what's the use of tears?

What's the use of praying when there's nobody who hears?

Turning, turning, turning turning turning through the years...

Watching the news this evening about the shootings in Connecticut and the stabbings in China, all I could do was think back to similar shootings and all the senseless rhyming in the recent history of school shootings and violence. I wrote a poem about this for Virginia Tech, years ago, and it sadly still rings true.

Sometimes the World Ends

Thanksgiving

Survival - incredible.            Should be inevitable.
Thankful                               Thankless

Both the dinner, and the diner
A stuffed bird on the table.

In which I post someone else's poetry, for a change...

A friend linked to this on Facebook a couple of days ago. It's not often one sees this perspective so clearly. Note that it's likely triggering.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22557

Memories - Alone

Daemons prowl, whisper, and growl

Surrounding, at night, my childhood home.

At most times, it is my fortress

But the moat dries up when I’m alone.

The perimeter is insecure

Shut windows, doors, all feel agape.

Locked tightly in reality;

Held open by my fear of rape.

I clean, inspect, and barricade

So fearsome sounds can’t penetrate

Each noise linked to a memory

That years of safety can’t obliterate.

At home, no one has hurt me;

Nothing evil ever crept inside

But alone in this large space

I feel naked, unsafe, spread, and tied.

Memories, and thoughts for something I'm working on

I've been working lately on a piece of some sort about a comment somebody made at work a few weeks ago about stalking...a comment that is still eating at my mind with the unfairness of it all, and how people can live so close to one another, and yet in different words dictated by memory. As a historian, memory is a powerful thing to me. As a survivor, even more so.

On that note, even though I haven't figured out the post I've been meaning to post since the middle of May, here's a poem series. It hurts but it's hopeful; it shows how far I've come in the long lifespan of this blog.

2004: I will always have these memories

Sometimes I try to hide from my memories,

Stuff them in a box in the closet

And crawl down under my bed.

Running a race where I'm going nowhere,

Running away from the thoughts in my head.

Chorus:

Memories come calling to find me every night

Buzzing through my brain like a horde of angry bees.

I try to cover up my heart but they still rip off a bite.

I will always always always have these memories.

Killing me so quietly, drowning me in my own thoughts.

I pack all of my fears away but still they hurt me lots and lots.

Always running, never sleeping, never knowing what to do.

Always doubting, always crying, wondering if my thoughts are true.

(Repeat Chorus)

Simple silence is inviting; conversations scare me more

When I just wish with all my heart to be just like I was before.

You claim that thinking cannot kill; I don't believe a bit of it.

Apologies are powerless; I really couldn't give a shit.

(Repeat Chorus)

And still you say you understand the nightmares that have captured me.

I could describe the horror but I know that still you wouldn't see.

My brain is in a whirlwind with the bottom flying to the top.

There's nothing I wouldn't give just for this awful hell to stop.

(Repeat Chorus)

But the memories follow everywhere as I climb this ladder high.

I stop on every rung, and I always ask the question, "why?"

Thinking feels so poisonous, the snake that bit could never know

All the pain that it can bring to ignore when I say "no."

(Repeat Chorus)

Memories come chasing me, so vivid, so hard to ignore.

Why oh why can't my life be as simple as it was before?

I try to just convince myself, it didn't happen, not to me.

A little part inside myself is crying out, this couldn't be.

(Repeat Chorus)

I'll chase myself in circles 'til I just come to accept this pain.

I wonder: can the flowers grow with little sun and only rain?

I toss and turn and overthink and never do I really sleep

But there's so many questions with the answers buried far to deep.

(Repeat Chorus)

In and out and round about and just to hide what I am hiding.

No safety bar to catch me on the Ferris wheel that I am riding.

It's time to climb a wall that stands all cold and stone and foreboding.

I dance in circles on the ground and always my head is exploding.

(Repeat Chorus)

Sometimes I try to hide from my memories,

Stuff them in a box in the closet

And crawl down under my bed.

Running a race where I'm going nowhere.

Running away from the thoughts in my head.

***

2005: Forget regret, or suffocate in memories

Last year I tried to dig up my memories

From the dark depths of my closet

And far down under my bed.

In a whole year

I’ve finally gone somewhere

And managed to catch

The thoughts in my head.

Memories came calling to find me every night

Buzzing through my brain like a horde of angry bees.

I tried to cover up my heart but memories aren’t water-tight.

Forget regret, or suffocate in memories.

Simple silence is inviting; some things scare me very much.

I wish it didn’t hurt but still I’ll run from just a friendly touch.

But finally I’m sleeping, having dreams that might make sense to you

But when you ask me what I want I really haven’t got a clue.

The big bad wolf’s stopped chasing me and now I can release this pain.

It’s winter but the sun’s come out to shine a rainbow through the rain.

But sometimes still I wonder how my life has changed because of it:

I try but can’t remember back before the pain had truly hit.

I’m just another paper doll, a carbon copy in a line

And I just wish that moment didn’t have the power to define

The pain that’s in the craters that follow everywhere I go

The craters that he tore and dug when he ignored when I said, “no.”

There’s skin now on my shoulders and I go to school without the fear

That I’ll forget and hurt myself when past and present smudge and smear.

My clock is going clockwise and I know I see the exit sign.

When I look at the past two years, it’s tangled, but it’s still a line.

***

2007: I built my fight from shattered memories

Memories are fluid, and engulf me when it’s right

To look at all the shattered glass that’s gathered in my knees.

I pull out every shard of glass, and I keep up my fight:

A fight that’s set on fire by my memories.

I build a fort of crystal shards

That puncture everyone I tell

I do not want to hurt them

But my silence always screams of hell.

The world is getting closer

And I’m finally back to live in it

But all these touches hover

‘til the memory hides me under it.

I don’t know where the hurt seeps in

But still I want to patch that hole

A hurt as hard and chilling

As a tongue stuck to a frozen pole

My freckles all are separate now

But still there are too much to count

But even so the memories

Outnumber them by sheer amount.

I keep the fight, take back the night

To puncture all my memories

But shards of glass are silent

And they can’t reveal what no-one sees.

I try and try and try again

To reclaim April every year

But taking back the day is hard

When no-one understands the thing I fear.

Memories are fluid and engulf me when it’s right

To pull out all the shattered glass that’s gathered in my knees.

The world is not a crystal ball

But that cannot stop my fight:

A fight with a sharp sword that’s made of memories.

***

2008: Memories might travel

Memories come calling: a sharp and savage bite

Acute and unexpected fear that brings me to my knees

I fight it, overcome it, but still on every flight

I go further but I can’t erase these memories.

You tell me snippets of your life

I’m certain we are not alone

But still, I had forgotten

Things can hurt me even far from home

I’ll try not to be frightened

But a part of me is terrified

That I will never sleep

In every hostel, every train I ride…

***

2011: I can turn around my sordid memories

The memories now are rarer, like a clatter in the night

A mirror reflecting fragments of the terror that it sees

What’s hardest now is that I know, though I have won this fight

For others, fear is realer than my memories.

Sometimes life is strange and silent;

Sometimes memories follow here.

Sometimes everything I see

Morphs into everything I fear.

Memories that snag into

The tapestry I’m knitting up

Come and paralyze my throat

Like pebbles in a sippy cup.

Monsters underneath the bed

Disperse when they see morning light

But monsters dwelling in my head

Are unreliable in their fright.

Day to day I’ll never know

When memories will swallow me.

A captive in a sunless cell

Will never know when she’ll be free

But always still I’ll live my life.

With dreams so big, I’ll voyage through

The gorge that jumps into my path

To strangle everything I do.

The fingers tightening ‘round my neck

Don’t know that they are powerless:

Now I can turn each touch I fear

Into a loving, safe caress.

The memories now are rarer, like a clatter in the night,

And now they quickly disappear like an evasive breeze.

I may never understand them, but I know the future’s bright:

I can win any war armed with my memories.

What's this? Another post in less than a month?

I think I've revived all my old posts, minus a few that I felt were inappropriate to keep now that I've made my blog visible. Just as an aside, anything that appears on this blog has the potential to be upsetting, minus the few-month period where I made some posts public on the illusion that this was a travel blog.

At any rate, I recently finished reading Alice Sebold's memoir, Lucky, and one quotation really resonated with me and reminded me of a poem I wrote years and years ago that I never posted here (I wrote a lot more poetry than is in the archives of this blog - most of it wasn't worth posting, even based on the somewhat grandiose self-serving criteria of the teenager that I was).

She wrote, "I live in a world where the two truths coexist; where hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand" (p. 243). I think that's the answer I was looking for in 2004.

Fractured Truths

April 7^th, 2004

I have two strong hands,

And they’re stronger than you think.

Strong enough to take the truth

And pull it into two pieces,

One to hold in each hand.

It’s still the truth,

And nothing but the truth.

The whole truth? Perhaps not,

But it’s not as if anybody

Really knows the difference.

I’m not a liar. There’s no wrong

In splitting my past into two parcels

And sharing it around how I like.

And if I use my mouth

And take a bite to keep,

Is there anything wrong with that?

I have two hands, one mouth, and one truth.

Why can’t I split it?

I've kinda been going for gore in my poetry lately

*trigger warning for blood*

Welcome to Ramat Aviv

April 27^th, 2007

Twelve stories below my new apartment

Jet lag blurring and smothering my eyelids

A woman with her head covered

Is bent in front of the grocery store.

Her head turned away from the unintelligible script.

She is a piece of difference

A curiosity for eight year old eyes

Out of place in this

Suburban confusion.

I avert my gaze

Ashamed to be staring

And find my eyes locked

On a cat, its guts spilled

Across the driveway.

I wonder if I have moved to

A land of secrets,

Hidden stares,

And spilled but unnoticed blood.

Sometimes the World Ends

I've had this blog for four years now. Which means four years since, well, other things.

But that's not important today, because there are more awful things happening today that invaded my head and ricocheted off the insides of my skull and swirled into a poem of sorts.

Sometimes the World Ends

April 16^th, 2007

Sometimes the world ends.

Twenty-one, now twenty-two died today

Pain building up with each number they say

Young names we’ll read at next year’s Kol Nidre.

Yes, sometimes the world ends.

Sometimes the world ends.

A fleet of sirens rush by on TV

Too late to save thirty-two, thirty-three,

Nameless numbers who cry inside me.

Yes, sometimes the world ends.

Sometimes the world ends.

Pierced bodies bleeding beyond our control

Amputated souls in the toilet bowl

Builds into pain from a sharp bullet hole.

Yes, sometimes the world ends.

Sometimes the world ends.

Everyone watches as fear sharp as knives

Rips out the shadow behind anger’s eyes

Sirens go silent, too late to save lives.

Voices are chanting, yes, still I rise

But sometimes the world ends.

Easter

Easter is in the air

I breathe in the musty smell of spring

And as a Jew

I don’t think of Jesus.

Easter is in the supermarkets

I survey the boxes of Easter eggs

Strangely placed in the Kosher food aisle

And puzzle at the depiction

Of rabbits who lay eggs.

Easter is in my body

A sinking feeling as it approaches

Teasing memories out of my mind.

Easter is in my footsteps

As I scurry from the bus stop

Head cocked over my shoulder

Waiting and afraid.

Easter is within me

Grabbing from behind

Forcing, thrusting, penetrating

Refusing to let go.