if truly

If truly I hated you, I'd
roll you in sugar, or
douse you in Tabasco,
whatever I had to do
to make your bitter taste
easier to swallow.

Finding My Place Of Strength

There was the time when, walking across my high school's courtyard at seven a.m., there was a loud noise- a thwack, and I was down. I’d been hit in the head with- a rock? And there was something wet dripping on my left ear. Was it blood? A searching finger revealed it to be albumen. I'd been hit on the side of my head with a raw egg, hard enough to knock me to the ground.

I was 17.

There was the time I was cornered in the boy’s room at the point of a switchblade, and called a “Faggot”. No, "worse", (in his eyes,) I was a “girl”.
“What’s a girl doing in the boy’s room? Take off your clothes, girl.”
My button down shirt and orthopedic saddle shoes ended up in the toilet. Only my blue J.C. Penny pleated cords were spared by the timely entrance of a teacher.

I was 8.

Then, there was the time I was surrounded on the P.E. field by 4 bigger kids. They called me "fatso" and "faggot". They violently kicked and shoved me as I tried to get away. When finally they pushed me down, my wallet fell out of the elastic waistband of my polyester P.E. shorts, and as they taunted me with it, one discovered the condom I’d hidden within, stolen from my father’s drawer, but worse for me, he also found something to really get me in trouble about: a baggie of small red pills I’d taken from our home medicine cabinet.

The pills were nothing but Sudafed, I’d carried them months as some kind of ill conceived exit strategy: In case things had gotten so awful I couldn’t stand another second, I would swallow them all in a bathroom stall.

When Mr. Fontana, our school's vice principal got a hold of the pills, I wasn't sent to the school counselor, nor was I asked what they were, or why I had them hidden in my wallet. The school rules were firm, and instead of a sympathetic ear, I was bent over his desk, my pants pulled down. He pressed his large, hot hand on the back of my neck as he stood over me with a heavy perforated wooden paddle. It was three strong strokes. (It could have been five, he'd warned, but he was being "lenient".) The four bigger kids, who'd bullied me didn't even get a detention.

This was at Highland Oaks Junior High School in North Miami Beach, and I was 14.

I’ve never been what you'd call masculine. In fact, there was a period in my early twenties when after years of living in a body I'd always felt sentenced to rather than gifted with, I’d finally decided to pursue gender reassignment. At that time however, the fact that my primary sexual/romantic attachments were with women, led the inept therapist to whom I’d been sent (the only one in Miami at that time, who dealt with the Harry Benjamin protocols for gender/sexual reassignment,) to concede that I wasn’t truly “gender dysphoric”: I was merely “confused”.

Not that any of this is truly pertinent to the above, but I am, and always have been quiet, sensitive, interested in things like fashion, (which, believe it or not, before the whole “metrosexual” thing, was thought largely to be the province of women and gay men,) art, philosophy, literature, music, etc. I've never had a bit of interest in sports, (though, if I'm being really honest here, and I am, I’ve occasionally enjoyed watching them under the right circumstances,) war movies, or fixing cars. In fact, I always preferred the company of women with intimate conversations and sisterly relationships, to that of men with what I always perceived as its brevity, lack of depth in bonding, emotional honesty, and "pissing contests”.

Beyond the whole masculine/feminine thing, I was always more of a creative person, and this came out loudly in my personal approach to fashion. As a teen, I was a regular punk rock peacock. I eschewed the popular mall bought fashions for thrift store treasures such as a bright orange plaid over sized suit which I’d customized with safety pins, scissors and patches, cinched at the waist with an extension cord, and roughly cut off just above the top line of my extra high combat boots. I wore a mohawk, (the only one in North Miami Beach,) and spray-painted it fire-engine red, and, at the height of my piercing fascination, I wore 26 earrings in my left ear, 12 in my right, and two tiny gold wire hoops in my right nostril.

Had I grown up in the East Village, it's likely that none of this would have so much as raised a pierced eyebrow, let alone inspired the violence I was so often subjected to, but this was the mid eighties, and I didn't live in New York. I lived in Miami, that pastel bastion of Miami Vice machismo, and all things conservative conformity.

Even my parents would ask me almost daily, why I couldn't "just fit in", why I felt the need to be so "weird”, and at the time, I didn’t have an answer. In retrospect, I know that they were pained as I was by the way I was treated, that they were worried about my safety, and that they were doing their best to protect me. At the time however, it felt like criticism, and to my fragile teenage ego, it amounted to little more than another egg upside my head.

The truth is, there was little I could have done to fit in. I just wasn't like those I was surrounded with. I couldn’t have cared less about homecoming or prom, high school football, or “banging” the hot "J.A.P. chicks" at North Miami Beach Senior High, had no interest in hanging out on the Ft. Lauderdale Strip and getting trashed on Friday nights, and I wouldn't have been caught dead in Guess, Sasson or Sergio Valente. I wanted more.

The morning I turned 18, I walked into my high school at just after ten. My mohawk which was usually more poodle like than fierce, was responding unusually well to the half a can of Aquanet I'd shellacked it with, and I felt celebratory and resplendent in my tattered thrift store jeans, brand new Docs and motorcycle jacket. It was the best "fuck you" outfit I owned. Rather than going to class, I walked into the principal’s office, and declared I was dropping out, and just two months later, in February of '87, I got my G.E.D., and was ready to enter college.

Once at Miami Dade Community College, (and later Florida International University,) no one said a word about my shaved head, piercings or carefully tattered rags. I found that as long as I contributed well thought out arguments in class, turned in fresh and interesting papers, and was generally just myself, I was rewarded with nothing but appreciation from my professors, and acceptance from other students.

Before I’d discovered my source of strength, (which maturity and experience have shown me to be nothing more than living within my own truth,) the years of bullying had left me a raw and bleeding nerve; I was weak and afraid, and— although I’d found creative ways to hide (such as dressing in what I now call “guy drag”), it usually took all the emotional energy available just to walk out my front door.

Now I live in New York. I am an outspoken, (and just plain "out",) transgender lesbian, a spoken word artist, writer, poet and activist. I’m in a committed, long-term relationship with a wonderful woman whom I love, who in turn, loves me as I am.

Being out as transgender affords me a kind of power I've never felt before. I am for possibly the first time in my life, genuinely unapologetic for my existence. It's wonderful beyond words to feel unconstrained by others' expectations or imposed definitions of who or what I should be, and I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could walk down Fifth Avenue in a pink prom-dress and Doc Marten’s and no one would look twice at me, except maybe the tourists who would ask to take pictures of the "wild, crazy chick who's just so very New York!"


*Note: Mom and dad, don't worry, the pink prom dress was just comedic hyperbole; I'm so much more of a punk rock, black t-shirt, jeans, 'n' Converse kinda chick!

Danny

You write of adventures in a
brand new home
(The land of your father, who’s re-
turned with a new beard)

Climbing Masada
you hiked up the “snake trail”
On a tour through Chevron you
donned your new pride like an
olive green shirt

I can see them indoctrinating you
Twisting you into them
Why am I so worried about you, you say?
Because you’re sensitive and kind
And I know that world well
how they think of these things
as weaknesses, or worse-
(they’ll call you a frier, and
knock you down
until you develop
your tough new Israeli scars)

so you stand up straight
and puff out your chest
and dream of the day
of your giyus
where you’ll lace up stiff boots
and look serious for your ID

and again you ask
why I'm worried about you?
Because it’s apparent
they’re already scarring you
And can’t you see? I bear
those scars too.

Walter

Your family looks for your ghost in corners while
nightly, you visit me in my dreams
We invent a language to
connect over you, not wanting to be trite,
(but who am I kidding?)
And now, each time
I leave my apartment, I carefully step
'round the stain on the walkway, which
might afterall, be from
your spilled brains.

On Writing (Modern) Poetry

Numerous are the legions of "poems", whose well rendered words are perfectly metered or rhymed, and maybe even chosen with such care so as to defy any suggestion of triteness or triviality, but who lack any real anima or soul. A "good" poem however, exists beyond the mere confines of its language.

There's an almost mystical quality to the process of writing a good poem; one might even assert that in fact, a poem isn't so much "written" as realized. I'll explain by personal example: When I sit down to "write" a poem, I pay little attention to the words I'm going to use, the form it's going to take, etc. Instead, I open myself to the soul of the poem; "what exactly do I need to convey?" Believe it or not, this is usually an almost painless process. When a real poem is ready to be born, it just won't be denied!

The next step is somewhat harder: getting out of the poem's way.
Anyone who has sat at their desk, a cafe table, on the edge of a cliff, etc., wishing to "compose a great poem", will have no doubt found themselves painting with broad strokes of ego. This is annoying, and almost never results in an enjoyable, interesting or enlightening poem. That's not to say that one can't write a great piece that exhibits his or her own point of view, (think "Two roads diverge in a wood...",) but it must not come from the desire to "prove something", or force something down the reader's throat, otherwise it'll result in little more than a self indulgence at the reader's (or audience's) expense.

Try instead, to allow the poem to be organic. I've found that thinking of it as a living thing, with its own set of needs and desires, helps me do this. This is very handy when it comes to the next step: editing.

When I edit a poem, I do my best to remove any extraneous content that might interfere with its purity. Usually, I begin this process with a chainsaw, and only later, when I’ve hacked off a sufficient amount of “fat”, do I go back in with a scalpel, finely trimming here and there, surgically shaping it. A good poem is, if anything, distilled.

Adjectives and adverbs are poetic potholes!
When Gary Snyder wrote "The Dead By The Side Of The Road", he relied on the cleanest prose:
" Zac skinned a skunk with a crushed head
washed the pelt in gas; it hangs,
tanned, in his tent"

He could have expended great energy on adjective laden descriptions, but instead he allowed the events or the moment to move it forward. Therefore, it has energy and immediacy.






This is equally true of both Raymond Carver's and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work. Neither provokes inertia with wasted adjective or metaphor; When Ferlinghetti writes

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass
Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers"

there's nothing unnecessary; in fact, the only adjective employed- "screendoor", is so new and specific, that it almost disappears, or takes on the same quality of motion as the rest of the poem.


Lastly, don't impose some artificial format on your poem. A poem, being organic, and having its own needs, tends to grow into its own form. This is not to say that there aren't some great and very enjoyable formalized poems; the dusty world of "Poetry" (notice the capitalized "P") is littered with them, but modern sensibilities tend to relegate these to the realm of the "quaint", and (rather unfairly,) the boring, so while I very much enjoy work by the likes of Donne, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the type of writing I'm discussing here is more akin to that of Snyder, Carver and Ferlinghetti.

Early readers of these three must have experienced one of three possible reactions:
"That's not poetry!",
"That's poetry?" -or-
"That's poetry!" .
All three largely disregarded earlier Western notions of what a poem is. Snyder studied and emulated Japanese and Chinese poetry with its pared down sensibilities. Ferlinghetti tuned into the music of the world around him, and Carver wrote almost as if he was writing fiction, which just happened to be readable as a poem. Whether one enjoys any of these approaches or not, it’s undeniable, that these three did something new, something interesting, something enjoyable, and something irrevocably poetic!

ארצנו Our Land

ארצנו
בנוי מאבנים
ארצנו
בנוי מכאב
ארצנו
בנוי מהבטחות ומפיוט
אחרי מאה שנה,
רק הפיוט
לא יהפוך לאבק


Our land
built of stones
Our land
built from pain
Our land
built of ​​promises and of poetry
after one hundred years,
only poetry
will not turn to dust

ערב שבת 2

אני נכנס את הדירה מהקריאת הפיוטי
בחוץ, זה כבר חושך
ובפנים, זה חם בתוך ההילה של הנרות השבת
השבוע המטורף, היא היה לעזאזל
העכשיו הזה,
הוא שלנו

I enter the apartment, fresh from my poetry reading
Outside, it's already dark
but inside it's warm in the glow from the shabbat candles
Let this crazy week go to hell
This now, is ours.

erev shabat

at seven o'clock you sweep
through the front door
your mood drags behind you like a
dusty bridal train
now thrown by the tempest of your
chaotic homecoming , it gets
caught in my hair
tangled in my curls
and now, I find that I
can't break free.

Y''m י''ם

אבני לבן על צלע ההר
היא מאירה את חום האבק באוויר

white stones on the hillside

she shines in the brown dusted air

exile

Some of us live in a per-
petual state of exile,
but exile is not always
imposed by place;
there are those who are left there
by the passage of time,
and those who were simply
born misfits into the world.
All who live in exile however,
have this in common:
we carry small pieces of our
native worlds with us,
like round, worn pebbles,
that are
sometimes in our pockets,
and sometimes in our shoes.

10.07:2010: Union Sq.

Come skittish bird,
return to your crumb; the
menacing feet have
gone away.

מולדת homeland

כאן,
בארץ אחי
ואחותי
הדוד
והדודה
הבית שלנו
הוא כל כך קטן
והמרפקים שלנו
הם חבולים


Here, in the land
of "my brother",
"my sister"
Of Uncle
and Aunt
Our house is so small
our elbows are bruised

Dedication

For walls and trees
For oil and air
For screen doors and Tuesdays old paint cans, and stairs
For grandmothers and chickens
For Volkswagens and quarks
For malcontents who protest,
and nervous dogs, who bark
For oaken tables and magazines, for computers and for gold
For rust and for decay, for mushrooms and for mold
For all that we once were
For all we shall become
It's really all the same
All is one. All is one.

A Plate

A plate that’s been in the oven warming left-over nachos from last night’s dinner falls to the floor; breaking into 13 pieces (3 major, 7 minor, 3 more nearly microscopic), it’s so shocked it forgets to continue being hot.

After THIS Storm

Hurricane Irene is coming to town. The thing is, I'm not terribly scared, nor am I not scared. You see, I've been through hurricanes before, and thus, I have a slight edge over many of my fellow New Yorkers. I know for example, that masking tape "x"s don't keep windows from shattering, and that storm windows in 100 mile per hour winds are actually no better than any others, just as I know that this isn't Armageddon, and a wall of water 30 stories high isn't about to sweep through Manhattan with biblical consequences. Then again, maybe it will. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not bemoaning my lack of an ark or collecting cooperative pigeons, but something about a storm of this magnitude actually fills me with something that just might pass for hope, (at least,if you don't look too hard).
It's been a terrible year; every time we turn on the news, some extremist somewhere is doing his or her damnedest to make life impossible for you and me, and corporations are strangling democracy to within a milimeter of its existence. Religious fanatics are citing recent earthquakes and economic turmoil as sure signs that "the beast" is afoot, and with a well intentioned but wishy washy Democratic incumbent going up against the likes of either Romney, Bachman or Palin, 2012 isn't looking so promising either.
Nevertheless, something about this hurricane business makes me smile a little bit. In about 20 minutes, our windows will rattle threateningly, our power may go out and we will be reduced to cold canned kidney beans for breakfast, but come Monday, the sun will rise. People will walk out their front doors, and having communally survived another near catastrophe, will actually say "excuse me" as they walk into me, their eyes glued to their iPhones. The news stand guy will smile as he refuses to look to see if he still has a copy of last weekend's Haaretz, and people will graciously acknowledge that I was at the bus stop before them, even as they elbow their way past me onto the 86 St. crosstown. For 5 minutes, New York will be glad the world is still here. At least until the next big scare.

Movie

So, we’re sitting on the couch reading the weekend paper, and I say to Cleo, “There’s this new picture at The Quad that sounded good.. Directed by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, it’s called “Paradise, Nu?”

Robert Eger says, “It stars Mike Burstyn of Kuni Lemel fame, and Gene Wilder as two madcap would be suicide bombers who do their best to cross borders and blend in as Haredim. Hilarity ensues as Mahmoud (played by Wilder) tries to buy a shtreimel from a shop in Mea She’arim, but the shop owner speaks neither Hebrew, nor Arabic, forcing Mahmoud to communicate in a combination of charades, and something approximating "pig" Yiddish, meanwhile, Omar (Burstyn) just wants a lafa, but the Falafel shop in Ben Yehuda is crawling with border police on their lunch. Will he risk the mission for a sandwich? Will Mahmoud get his hat? Will the two ever make it to Paradise? Two thumbs up.. this movie is the bomb!”

“I'm not sure,” says Cleo, “it kinda feels like it’s been done before.

Haredim - ultra-orthodox Jews

shtreimel - a hat made of a fox's tail wound around the head, typically worn by Satmar and Netureikarta chasidim

Mea She'arim - "Hundred Gates", an ultra orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem

lafa - Iraqui pita, larger than Israeli pita, with no "pocket". Used as a wrap, rather than being stuffed.

Ben Yehuda - A pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem

if..

The tension is growing between the lovers, you can feel it coming in the peace between them. But maybe you're wrong this time. Maybe, Amir and Noa will work it all out, get married, have a kid, buy a dog and a house outside the city where possibilities sprout from between the squares of pregrown grass that make up the front lawn.. it's possible, you tell yourself, but then again, if everything was grand in the end, if Amir got his tenure at the university, if Noa finished her book, if their son Gidi didn't grow up and get shot in Lebanon, if they lived long and contented lives, free from tension and tragedy, would you in fact, be sitting by the window, your legs curled under you, holding this book?

Soup

How much is say, a container of the best soup in the world worth to you? Say you’re sick, and the best soup in the world is across town, in a little hole in the wall called Mogadishu Café. Say you have a fever, and the only thing in the world that would make you feel better, is this soup. Now, say your roommate, who’s this quiet Indian guy who the Foreign Student Union set you up to live with, would have to race if he left right now, just to catch the cross town bus to get to this place before it closes for the weekend, and say the owner is willing to wait an extra 15 minutes, but no more, because he had a good day. Now, say your roommate races out the front door, and it’s starting to rain, but neither of you has an umbrella worth its salt. Your roommate get’s soaked, and you promise to yourself, you’ll make it up to him. You’ll set him up with the cute blonde on three who laughs at your jokes in the laundry room, the one you were hoping to score with yourself. You’ll do his laundry for the next three weeks. That seems fair. Maybe you’ll finally clean the apartment, top to bottom like he’s been asking you to do for months now.

How much did you say that container of soup was worth to you? Say that, while running for the crosstown bus, his glasses blurry with rain, your roommate doesn’t look and darts out into 72^nd St, hopelessly as the bus pulls away from the curb?

Even if it was a semi-trailer that hit him, and they said it was instantaneous, was the soup worth what you’ll carry the rest of your life?

On Writing

Herbs and spices
dry in jars on my shelf.
One day,
maybe even in many years,
they're going to make
a tasty soup.

Here is the Road

Here is the road
on whose center I walk:
On one side the flowers
are heavy, and sweet,
and hanging from a cactus,
a sabra, ripe and tempting.
On the other,
glass and steel, and
Guo's Garden, whose
kung pao sets your
tongue on fire.
The road is wide,
the sides far apart,
and the sabra after all,
is growing behind a fence,
But look at the red sky,
the Friday sun is setting;
will it be omelettes in front of the
T.V. on the couch,
or will we
sit together at the table,
eating slowly, playing sheshbesh
This road we walk is
a balancing act.
We take from what's familiar,
arrange it as best we can;
the narghila sits in the corner
unlit,
and Keret and Kishon debate
"HaMatzav" on our dusty shelf.
Maybe
just for this week,
we'll put off clearing the table,
instead, take out the bag of menus,
and hold hands on the couch.




Sabra - A cactus pear
Sheshbesh - Backgammon
Narghila - a water pipe, also known as a hookah
Keret and Kishon - Etgar Keret and Efraim Kishon, two well known Hebrew writers who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum
HaMatzav - Literally, "The Situation"