Sunday, October 6, 2024

An October 7 Poem

for months I have thought
of how I will answer my grandchildren
when they ask me, “what did you do
to stop it?”
when it is slaughter wrought
by the hands of my people

all are responsible

I have donated money
    a privileged response
I have gone to vigils
    self-soothing
and I cannot march
anymore.
for decades I have marched, and every passionate step
against wars and for human rights
to no avail

yes, I pray
and I believe
but we do not have enough
pure hearts among us, it seems,
to bend the arc toward peace
or not enough of us
are trying

"I sit inside the shell of the old Me
I sit for world revolution"

but I cannot sit anymore
and the only thing I can think to do
is set myself on fire

I look at the famous Vietnamese monk on fire
almost everyday
as a plea as a protest for an end
to suffering and oppression

on June 11,
which is also my wedding anniversary,
"maintaining his meditative posture"
a friend poured fuel on his body
and he lit a match
as a crowd and a photographer watched
and he burned himself
to death

three people have already
lit themselves on fire
and burned to death
to stop this war:
Aaron Bushnell, Matt Nelson, and an unnamed 61-year-old woman
(how like the Torah to have an unnamed woman)

    Edit: now a fourth attempt – Samuel Mena

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, “What would I do
if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South?
Or apartheid? What would I do if my country
was committing genocide?

The answer is, you’re doing it.
Right now."

What could be more Jewish than fire?
Sometimes holy, sometimes strange or forbidden
always a force of destruction and creation
purification
black fire on white fire
a body, white fire, a soul’s scream, black fire
together the prayer and the protest and the burnt offering and the Torah of the act
lighting one’s own body on fire
in desperation
in horror in grief in guilt
to purify

what of my children and my parents?
what will the people who need me and love me
take from sifting through my ashes?

four people have already lit themselves on fire
to no avail
what hubris is it to imagine
my body burned will make any difference?
my body is not special
my heart is not pure

is this poem enough? when I am asked
what I did, what I am doing, can I answer
"I wrote a poem"?

the bile it brings up
is the answer

like a healthy adult who soils themself on the way to work,
I go about my days, tend to my responsibilities,
eat and walk and love while people suffocate
and explode and burn and grieve
by the hands of my people who are lost in a desert
and then I look at Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese Buddhist,
and I am soiled
and stuck
and exhausted
    a privileged response

is this poem a suicide note
from the traumatized, corroded soul of Israel?

not in my name
all are responsible

who shall live and who shall die?
who by fire and who by collapsing building?
who by starvation and who by neglect?
who will be serene and who will be tormented?
who will die in captivity and who will live in captivity?
who will turn their head and who will wring their hands?
who by fire? who by fire? who by fire?

if I light myself on fire, will my body’s candle purify our hearts?
will my burnt offering stop our hands from igniting other bodies?
will a pillar of fire rise from my head to the sky and light the way
out of this desert of ashes?

 



Quote 1: Allen Ginsberg, “Why I Meditate”
Quote 2: “Why have some Buddhist monks set themselves on fire? Buddhism for Beginners.” Tricycle magazine online.
Quote 3: Aaron Bushnell’s final Facebook post before his death by self-immolation. Newsweek magazine online.

Monday, October 9, 2023

ענין רע

a found poem
(source: Beloved by Toni Morrison)

the deeper and more tangled

the jungle grew inside

(this must be written

in red ink)

it spread, touched them every one

made them bloody

so scared were they

of the jungle they had made


a person that wept, sighed, trembled, fell

a breastplate of darkness

straddled by the activity of the dead

a loaf of flesh, sticky and sour

in a hole or kneeling


Look.

What is it?

Me and You.


We got more yesterdays than anybody

We need some kind of tomorrow

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

What Do I Want?

To know where that ladder goes

To know what this bug thinks

To pull every invading weed

To not perceive growth as invasive

To share with dear, deep friends

To be alone

To generate syntactical repetition

To be incessantly unique

     To recognize your voice

To formally assert your favorite idea

To be free


Friday, March 10, 2023

wiling away time

on a rainy morning with

you, my true heaven


Saturday, February 4, 2023

You Call To Me

local coyote

hit on Allen Avenue

today breaks my heart

Sunday, January 29, 2023

unable to write
about last night’s ugly dream
but can’t shake it

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

notice the new growth,

long limbs, nearby friends — even

the power line adds beauty

Saturday, January 14, 2023

one leaf falls among

countless raindrops, seeking friends

who share dreams of flight

Thursday, January 12, 2023

In a Forest

 a green sapling grows

sturdy, verdant and rooted

beside its mother

Wednesday, January 4, 2023

in darkness, leaves flow by
in the gutter river, but
of course, progress unseen

Monday, January 2, 2023

roll over to discover
moonglow's reflection on my bedsheet
alerting me to notice

Sunday, January 1, 2023

New Year’s Day rainbow
fragment, faint spot really -
I cling to the omen, regardless

Saturday, December 31, 2022

my true friend the sky
gives cleansing love to the seeds
of freedom I planted today 

Thursday, December 22, 2022

for Patti Smith

 
artist  mother  daily
hero, spinning soot and sugar
inspiring nourishment
among the beautiful weeds 

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

our journey is our
destination. night’s shadows
cannot be caught. stars

on the ceiling, on
the tips of my fingers, on
our eyelids, like coins.

stars are our truest
currency - abundant and
reaching out to us 

from infinity.
put out the false light that hides 
our birthright. reach back

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

November 9, 2016

this unreal morning
the squirrels and the coffee
don't know - all has changed

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

waiting for the process
scan in progress completion --
til now, no threats found

may it be so too
tomorrow and all nights
forward for us all

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Joe had to lose a trump to the Queen

a found poem
(Daily Bridge Column by Frank Stewart: 9/27/16) 

You hold:
Your partner opens one heart,
you respond one spade and he rebids two hearts.
What do you say?

The deal appears to be a misfit.
Your partner surely has a six-card heart.
He has shown minimum opening values
and may have no tolerance for spades at all.

Pass.
When you have no trump fit, stop bidding.
Both sides vulnerable.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Friday, August 19, 2016

there is no reverse
for birds, only forward flight
in all types of sky

Thursday, June 30, 2016

friends gather around the screen
leaning in and giggling
to keep a secret

amid pastel animal prints
by children that double
as advertisements

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

New Growth

fruit born
from seeds long sown
in this everchanging garden

brings grace
to our quaking leaves
and hearts

Thursday, March 24, 2016

start now to do what
is right in your heart
now right do start

Thursday, May 14, 2015

your journey is not my journey
though your struggles mirror mine.
be strong and persistent to the end.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

books are better
than diamonds when rain
falls at last

Sunday, May 3, 2015

kirtan kavannah

the entire earth
generosity
and not self

breathe in foul
hold and transform
breathe out ahava

oozing and coating
the neighborhood city earth
in sweetness

peanut butter and jelly on rye
holy holy holy
surrounds and fills



Monday, April 27, 2015

midday confusion may give way
to compassion if patience is served
in a water glass with lemon

Sunday, April 26, 2015

sitting across from blackness
in armbands, blackness professing love
on the back of a book receipt

inky oblivious blackness
lonely as a cloud in loud calligraphy
slow motion come back for more

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Partisans


They would transport photoless false identity cards (they would not know how many they were carrying) from Vilne to Hrodno, a routine trip. They would make contact in three days (they would not know their contact's name), which would give them time to pack carefully. They would make their way through Ponar, using the skills they’d been trained in and their own cunning, and head south. Both sisters had Aryan features and would be dressed as Aryans in kerchiefs, and both would speak German, which they had learned as children from their grandmother. Even when they were two alone, speaking to each other, they would speak German to eliminate a possible error of intuition or habit (they would not know who was listening). They packed their rucksacks together, sharing where they could and providing advice, one to the other. The older would carry the hairbrush and tooth powder; the younger took both extra pairs of bulky wool socks. In the morning, each would receive a starless coat and a packet of life to hide under her skirts, and they would walk away into the unknowable woods.

Friday, January 2, 2015

I Did Say Yes

found poem from "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (part the first)
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

O at lightening and lashed rod
the swoon of a heart
astrain with leaning of, laced with fire
fled with a sling of the heart
to the heart
from the flame to the flame then, tower

soft sift in an hourglass
kiss my hand
lovely - asunder
out of bliss springs the stress felt
hushed by, hearts are flushed by
the faithful waver, the faithless fable

only the heart being hard at bay
is out with it
brim, in a flash, full!
Thou art lightening and love
and fondler of heart
dark descending