Often, in the midst of some
Day to day mundanity,
My eyes scan the room
And note that door
And something like ambivalence floods my veins;
How easy, to rise,
Discern my path, and walk through it
Even if
For no other reason
Than the simple fact that
It's there.
Then at some point
Between the alerts, you'll
Make yourself a mug of tea
(something to remind
what "normal" felt
like)
You'll sit in your kitchen
At the open window,
Wrapped in a long, black,
Thrift store wool coat
(that once held a man,
at least twice your
size,)
And note the indifferent late afternoon sky
All daubbed with pretty puffs of pink
(so thick, you think
"they look like cotton
candy",)
And dunk a biscuit in your tea
Hold it there for
Five "Mississippis"
(the perfect length, for
just slightly soggy,)
Then take a bite
(with tongue– not
teeth, pressed
hard against the
roof of your mouth)
And thus you spend your in-between times
Waiting for your tea to cool
Waiting for the sun to sink
Waiting for the sabbath to end
And the next red alert that you know will come
(you can practically feel
a new rhythm forming)
And already, your body knows this notation
Already, she's relearned
All her old steps
(almost independently,
like you
weren't even
necessary,)
And before you know it, this will feel normal
You'll float from couch, to kitchen, to shelter
To bathroom, to bed,
And shelter again
All on cue, an automaton
And to anyone watching, this
Strange performance
It might even look like you're
Actually alive.
Often, places make better poems
Than clumsy words might hope to construct.
An alley runs through the middle of my block,
All lined by wild, and weedy lots
Where cacti and tamarim share the red soil
At night, they're home to crying jackals,
Heat mad cats, and balletic bats
Once, I thought I'd found a gift
A tousle of oleander–
"Rapunzel's hair"
But in the end, it was white hibiscus
A pleasant tea
A promise, dashed.
Of all possibilities, it's a
Small, green, sour apple I choose
To break my forty hour fast.
Hungrily, I bite through it's
Lightly textured skin, perfect
Pale yellow crisp flesh, and
Do not stop until
Just a stem,
And a few small, brown seeds
Are all that remain in my sticky palm.
All of this, simply to say,
To you, who've so kindly checked in,
That reports of my death by starvation
Are greatly exaggerated, indeed.
The thin chill of late Autumn's evening Haifa air,
Dances in through
Open windows, and
Like shy feathers, touches the
Skin of my bare shins and feet
While the rest of my body
Curls inward to nest
Inside my gigantic, faux fur coat.
I'm laying on the couch
Its back cushions stacked
Upon the floor at one end,
To widen the space of my crippled's bed.
Through the same windows,
The day's light fades
Not gently, it explodes
In oranges, and vivid pinks,
Then surrenders to blues, and finally black
And outside, a cat yowls
And sticky cars' tires complain
As they try to hold onto the street
It's my body, now that opens a memory:
Cold, late afternoons,
Sat by the computer,
Beside the open bedroom window
How empty that apartment
When She wasn't home
Loneliness, like spikes in
The bottoms of bare feet on cold, buckled floorboards-
How I'd push it away
In the warm escape of
Others' lives online
And when sometimes even
That wasn't enough
I'd climb into our bed, my cold feet, not
Daring to reach out for the
Home of her foot's sole
Instead, like my body right now,
Protectively,
Pulled inwards toward self
And rub them together
Beneath the duvet covered
Down winter comforter
My body trying desperately to
Pull in warmth
My face, out,
Open throated gulping air
The cold New York air like
Clean, ice water.
The jets, whose roars split
The Haifa skies
Are so dammed heavy; you
Can't even begin
To imagine. In fact,
They weigh
As much, as the sum
Of every world
They've had to destroy.
This is just the way with war:
Each rocket–
Every missile, grenade..
Even bullet
Carries unimaginable mass
And always,
No matter which side
They leave behind
A million black holes.
Now, don't get it twisted,
This isn't condemnation.
I know too well the importance of war.
But at the same time,
How can I possibly
Ignore the suck
Of all those black holes?
That time I wanted so badly to feel
A different kind
Of dust on my boots
Red, so fine and dry‐
Do you remember how I
Begged you to come to the desert with me?
To sleep again
Underneath black skies
To feel the chill of earth, so dry
That even in summer, at night, we'd freeze
To wake at first light
To the longing, red hills
To the world: a fresh wound
Yawning, open before us.
The tissue-thin, dried-out, brown, crumpled leaves, still sit–undisturbed, in the grey, stone pot that you left behind, when you moved out.
It's the only thing that, when I moved in, I left in its place, on the floor, by the window.
Unlike the box of your old cookware, that I had to haul to the orange street bin, or the long, folding, banquet table, I carried under my arm, all the way to the Wizo thrift shop.
These things all had stories that took up too much space, and you left them behind, for me to deal with.
But the heavy, grey, volcanic stone pot, was already a ghost; I just think you forgot.
Trust me when I say this: in my fifty-six years, I've moved more times than I can count, and as unromantic as it may sound, we're always leaving our ghosts behind:
An old plant in a corner
we'd forgotten to water
A snow globe given by an
office friend
A shoebox of some
deceased relative's
clippings
All just ghosts from a life,
Ephemeral things.
In this driving, blinding, crushing rain,
There's little to nothing that can be seen,
Beyond the house across the street;
Even the bright, port crane lights are gone.
I dreamt, last year, of a massive flood,
That swallowed the jettys that lie in the Bay
And went on to eat the docks,
The port, Bat Galim, and the Lower City
And as the waves white caps lashed hard
The houses, and cracked their graffiti'd facades,
The concrete block, brick and rock
Walls b'neath gave way, and fell
The kiosks, cafés, Tambours, makolets,
All seemed to sigh, surrender, and sink.
The old Russian men who ran shops in Hadar,
Soviet, and stoic, shrugged and drank tea
The Christian Arabs all fervently prayed,
Masjid minarets played Al Adhan
And as the waters continued to rise
Threatening us, atop Har HaCarmel
News 12 said that "..well, of course,
the new Ark has long already been built,"
Then went on to say, "...but there's only room,
for Bibi, Sarah, and the Haredim".
And while I stood at my kitchen window,
Looking out as my city drowned,
'Twas the raven I envied, who'd refused to return
And not at all, the supplicant dove.
Although the sky is falling, nothing ever seems to stop:
Police sirens wail, the traffic hums, and ships (imperceptibly) "race"
To unload goods at port for us and our impatience
The neighbours across the way
Are fighting yet again;
He'd promised to fix the roof last year and now the floor is wet.
So much commerce, all the time; so much to get done
I try to lose myself, instead in watching my pigeons;
Some huddle 'neath dudei shemesh,
Others bravely stood atop: defy the downpour, and
Autumn chill, to gaze upon their world;
They seem to say, "why miss a moment, of this hungry life? It eats us whole, no matter what, so live! Don't just survive."
The obstreperous white of
Cranes' wings in flight
Strike the battleship-steel-grey sky, and
Slash the seamless, fog-drawn dawn;
A brilliance, bright as
Summer's Sun
All calls to mind, how even now,
In dark'st November,
When torpor pulls
Me back to slumber—
The refuge of dreams,
(When all of mine have
Come undone,)
It's neither time to
Give in, nor give up,
With promises waiting, like
Bulbs 'neath the frost
If only I can just hold on
Through interminable Winter's stark,
As day succeeds night, the Spring will dawn
Only new light can vanquish old dark.
I've kept your mug.
The one with the alligators,
Where each one's different,
But every one,
Has the tail of another one
Clamped in its teeth.
You'd told me once, how
The only time, you'd
Use it, was when,
To you, it felt like
The entire world
Was "nipping at your tail"
And I understood instantly,
How it was a part of you
From outside of mom, and me.
I've often wondered
Where did you get it?
Did you buy it for yourself
Some evening, waiting,
Between trains?
Back in the early Seventies
When you worked for
Barton-Aschman
When we lived in Chicago,
And we only had one car,
So, at night, after work
You'd take the train,
Into Evanston,
Where mom and me
Would come pick you up
Me, in footsie pajamas
Red boots and winter coat
While the impotent wipers
Swept the snow off of the windscreen
Of mom's burgundy Renault?
Or, did you find it one morning,
Left, wrapped, on your desk,
A gift from a co-worker,
Or maybe the whole team
Because they'd actually seen
The monsters that you fought
(Both from without, and from within?)
Did it make you feel seen?
Did you feel understood? God,
I hope that you did.
I hope that at least once,
The world had been more kind to you,
Than it later, had become,
When you lay dying in a bed
That wasn't even yours,
Alone and scared, while
The insurance company threatened.
I've kept your mug.
Once, when I was visiting you
And mom, from New York, you'd
Walked into the kitchen,
Just as I was about to pour my coffee into it
And you told me not to use it,
That it was personal, something special
And you told me why, so that
Maybe I wouldn't feel offended
And I'd understand, how for you
It was sacrosanct; an amulet
For the worst of times.
I kept your mug
Out of all of the objects that
Populated our home with their stories
This is the part of you
I chose to bring with me.
I've used it only once
When I felt trapped by my shortcomings
That was back in New York, just after you'd died.
I kept your mug.
I keep it safely tucked
Towards the back of the cabinet,
Behind all my others,
Deeply loved, even if rarely seen
And I hope that maybe
That's the way, you'd
Told yourself
I felt about you.
My ancient home is
High above the bay
In Fall, I open up
All the windows
Air out the rooms from the
Stale heat of Summer
But none of the doors in my
Apartment latch
And with the windows open
It becomes a wind tunnel
And the wind plays percussion,
And the neighbours complain
But who am I?
And who are they,
To try to dictate when the
Bay wind, can play?
It starts as soft panic, that
Sends me back
To the sweetness of sleep.
When finally, I wake
It's at the insistence
Of my twitching nerves.
The toilet calls
Then coffee, and I'll stand,
Once again at my
Kitchen window, as the
Electric kettle, lit blue,
Bubbles
I'll assess the world,
Note the state of the bay,
And whether the pigeons are around today
Then, coffee made,
I'll adjourn to my chair; maybe
Flip through my phone
Or write a small poem
Anything to ignore the
Insurmountable mess that's
Taken over every
Inch of my home–—
"Just, don't look up- keep
your
Eyes on your phone, or
Something else,
Something
manageable, maybe
Sew another hat
Or write another poem"
While meanwhile, the piles of
Detritus grow
And so does the mould that's destroying my home
And wreaking this hell on my body.
By far, it's not that it's
Actually cold, but
There's an absence of
Warmth in the air
Already, I sense the
Truncated light, that
Turns grey afternoons
Into ink-black-blue nights
Already, again these
Old bones of mine
Have turned into picky,
Dith'ring, crack'd sticks
Who beg me to pull on my father's old coat,
A seasonal surrender,
But I protest! Look,
The sun is still bright as it
Was in July,
And flocks of white sailboats
Still rock on the bay
But closer by
To where I stand
The roof where my friends roost,
Is silent today
No cooing or flapping,
No comforting din
Just empty and quiet
No performance given
And down, below
Where the streetcats yowl
Or laze, in afternoon's
Dust speckled sun
It's deserted too; no
Amity found
There's only the city's
Far-off, lonley hum.
Oh, this precious thing
This old, stained, banged-
Up brass tray, marked with
Permanent footprints from my
Mother's Shabbos candlesticks
And a small, round, nickel-sized
Imperial Russian seal,
That looks like an ancient coin
And captivated me as a girl
This tray that my
Bubbe's bubbe carried
All the way to the New World from Minsk
(Or maybe it was Pinsk?)
This thing, that
Like an archaeologist, I've
Carefully extracted with an exacto-knife
From layers, and layers of bubble wrap
And now hold tight, to my chest,
The wetness on my cheek,
Surprising even me
Hundreds of years
Generations of daughters,
And mothers, and bubbes
Now here with me,
The last of the line
Pressed hard to my heart,
This culmination of dreams
Each year, we would say
"לשנה הבאה בירושלים!"
"Next year, in Jerusalem!"
And even now, it's hard to believe, that
Here I am
And you are now here with me
(Maybe not Jerusalem,
But only a short train ride away)
And though I've not brought forth a
Daughter,
Who will stand one day, like we
A white kerchief on her head, and
Sweet prayers on her lips,
And sadly, I know that this
Tray, and all of our ghosts
Will inevitably end
Up in some junk shop, someday
But for now, at least,
This Friday night
I'll stand in my livingroom
Wooden matches in my hand
(White kerchief on my head
Sweet prayers on my lips)
And you will stand beside me
In this Land of all our dreams,
And finally fulfill
The promise we had made.
Skeletal fingers of
Winters trees,
Accusing the sky,
And bluegrey, side-
Ways slanted light
On felt-cover'd mounds
All painted white
That threat'n to pull me, toward
Hiraeth, to someplace,
Where weary, my
Soul might rest
And dream of warm light,
While here in crass brightness,
I dream only of softness
Of dimmed, blurred lines
And patient stillness,
The kind that I
Have only found
In Deep'st Winter's night.
...and yet
Another haphazardly made wound is healing,
New flesh, knitting to old
Even the stomach
And liver have stopped conspiring
To fill all my hours with bile
And this late October day
And its gently bright, clear skies,
All puff dappled white, and
Temperate air, is too
Much from which to hide
And even my friends, the pigeons,
Have deserted their roof-
Top roost
I imagine, they've all gone out shopping
For more delicate lunchtime repost
Perhaps a few careless crumbs dropped
On the decks of one of the boats
Who look half-asleep on the
Silver faced bay, barely
Bobbing at all as they float
And the poor yellow alley cat,
Who's yowling, hungry, below,
May have to stray, and hunt
Elsewhere today, for his meager, daily prey
The world seems to be in
Accord
Someone must have found a way
After all, this Fall light is
Far too sweet, and
No bird will die today.
Prokofiev's pigeons,
Painted the colours of
Gutter-spilt oil and
Gentle ash,
Pinprick the featureless
Pale cold sky when,
As a flock– they all alight!
A balletic mobile in
Multiple dimensions,
Their bellies, now sparkling
White, like gems, in the
Bay's reflected
October light
Then gently, as if by some
Prearranged contract,
Return, to rest, once again,
On black slab rooftops, or
Tilted solar panels, puffed up,
Crouched low, in the
Cold sideway winds
And patiently wait for the
Next orchestral updraft, so this
Corps de ballet can begin,
Once again.
Part of this overwhelming sense of doom I'm feeling, is that, in his last couple of years of life, after my mom had died, my dad was penniless too. Still, we sold what we could of the treasures my parents had accrued over a lifetime together, hoping to sustain him on a little more comfort, a little bit longer, but most of it– paintings and signed lithographs, Knoll chairs that are still in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other examples of mid-century modern design was worthless to the capricious monster that is capitalism.
After his middle-of-the-night bathroom falls that left him with a broken hip and a concussion, unable to remain in his home, he was shunted from hospital to hospital, and rehab center to rehab center. Even while on his deathbed, the convalescent center where he was staying called me daily, telling me that, because his insurance had lapsed, they were going to have to "release" him; in other words, kick him out onto the street. While the cancer spread through his crumbling bones, he, and I, prayed that it would finally take him more quickly, only so that he wouldn't have to die homeless. He begged me to help him die, but I was afraid.
Most of you who knew me at the time might recall that in the midst of this terrible time, I suddenly had to leave him and return to New York, because my partner of 19 years, the love of my life, was suddenly dying of a cancer, none of us had even known she'd had, and on 2 November, 2 days before our anniversary, her heart stopped as I held her small, blue hand. Two days later, on our anniversary, I burried her.
That afternoon, on our way back from the cemetery, my phone rang, and it was the facility where my dad was, once again, calling to see if I could cover his expenses, and threatening that if not, they were going to have to evict him that coming Monday.
Thankfully, (I don't even remember how,) I was able to fenegel a few more "stays of execution", and on 27 February, 2023, shortly after his 89th birthday, penniless, and alone, my dad died.
It's almost 3 years later, and I haven't recovered from a single aspect of the serial losses of my mom in 2020, my wife in 2022, my dad in 2023, my family home and most of the belongings within it, and my relationship with the wider world since the horrors of 7.10.
It all adds more than I can even begin to disseminate from the overwhelming, all encompassing sense of overwhelm I already experience as a neurodivergent, navigating the intricacies of my day to day world.
Although never officially diagnosed, (because he was born in 1933,) my dad, like me, was autistic, and had crippling adhd. Like me, he was highly intelligent, an intellectual– boundlessly, passionately curious about the world around him, and unfortunately, completely useless when it came to surviving it.
Throughout my life, we'd had an uneasy, and tumultuous relationship, but I loved him, and I wish more than anything I had understood him better; I wish I'd understood that he wasn't as constantly angry as he often seemed, he was panicked, and afraid, and because I often read his outbursts as mere desire for control, and a terrifying fury at me for not being more readily controllable, my own behaviour towards him was more often than not, cold.
I'm so sorry dad.
Once, at 17, following an unsuccessful suicide attempt, I was hospitalised in the psych unit of Miami Children's Hospital. My parents came to visit, and take me out for a meal, but in the car, we had a fight, and I lashed out at my dad, saying, "I don't want to be anything like you! You're nothing!". He said nothing back, but my mom later told me that after they'd dropped me off back at the hospital, crying, my dad had to pull over to the side of the road, and throw up.
Again, I'm so sorry dad. I wish that I could go back in time and just hug you and tell you how much I really do love you.
I suppose that that's the reality of karma; not only will I never be able to make ammends, but here I am, at 56, and apart from the cancer, (as far as I know, ) the threats that he escaped by dying, are the threats that will now most likely follow me for the remainder of my own life, and for the exact same reason: despite my cruel proclimation that day in the car, as it turns out, I am in fact, exactly like my dad.
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