Caution

Pronouns are
heavy blunt objects.
Falling pronouns
may break your bones.
Swinging a pronoun
in a crowded room
may result
in grievous injury.
Beware of pronouns:
Use with caution.

Bitch

St. Mark's Place
Crowd of male voices
teenagers chanting
"Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!"
A young woman's voice breaks through:
"Let me go!"
All of this happens
out of my sight
Behind the protection of a
parked box truck.

How Blessed

How blessed to feel
at home in my own skin
For years, so worried
over minutiae, like
the proper way to carry schoolbooks, and
the masculine way to walk
How I covered up my body
in the South Florida heat
Covered my soft curves
in denim and leather layers
Now how blessed
not to hide
unembarrassed for my soft hands
and to no longer fear
the natural sway of hips
to take off the mask
To become
unstiffened
How blessed it is
to be myself.

Please Don't Ask

Please don't ask me if I'm going to
"cut it off",
it’s none of your damned business, and it
reduces me to
an object of
“genital dissonance”.
Don't ask me who I'll be tomorrow,
I barely know
who I am today.
Ask me instead, how does it feel?
What was it like to be
forced into boyhood,
(then manhood,)
to have been made to don some kind of
learned masculinity,
all the while fearing the fragilty of my disguise.
Or, ask me what it's like to be a
double agent
a secret spy in the
war of the sexes;
I'll happily give away all my learned secrets,
see, I've always been kind of an antiwar activist!
Ask-
what was it like to grow up in a world that told me
time and again that it's
better to pretend,
rather than to risk anyone finding out the horrible truth.
And finally,
ask me what it feels like, at the age of 43,
to grow tired of pretending, and I'll gladly tell you,
it's like
taking off a pair of someone else's shoes,
shoes that have always been 2 sizes
too small.

When I'm An Old Woman

When I’m an old woman, I’ll wear denim shirts

and big turquoise rings on my

tanned, knotted fingers

When I’m an old woman, I’ll paint in my garden

mixing red dust from the earth

into oil, and light

I’ll grow out my gray hair

way down past my ass, and be

“that strange old woman, who barely ever comes to town”.

When I’m an old woman, I’ll laugh about the time

when everyone around me, thought that I was a man.

When I’m an old woman, I’ll smile at the mirror,

because the woman smiling back at me, knows

who I am.

I'm Trying To Invent A Brand New Language

I’m trying to invent a brand new language
to tell you about the place that I’m from
but I can’t use words such as
female, or male,
you’d never understand how they don’t apply.
So I’ll tell you instead how I
come from a marshland:
a soft place between
two fortified nations with
impassable borders and
natal requirements for citizenship.

If I tried to explain how I’d been handed
the wrong disguise
by the border coyotes when I came to this place, or
if I told you I don’t have a green card
and that I feared discovery
every second of every day,
maybe you’d see,
maybe you’d understand, how
try as I do just to fit in,
and try as I have all of my life,
none of that matters.
I’m just not from here.

And I wish I could tell you
how lonely it is here
when nobody else can
speak my language:
a language that
even I have yet to learn.

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"

Erev Shabbat

One Friday night, God, who's real name is Chaim, just happens to look down from heaven, and as he does, he happens to look at Tel Aviv.
He sees people dancing at The Fifth Dimension, people smoking on the beach, riding scooters, etc. His mother puts her hand on his shoulder, and says “Chaimka, you have to do something about this.. It’s not kosher! They’re making a freyer out of you, can’t you see? Yallah, send another flood.”
God smiles at his mom, says, “Dai ima, it’s how Israelis are.. stam.. nudnikim. They do things to annoy, it’s just how they show affection.”
"Oof," says God's mother, shaking her head, "come eat. Your soup is getting cold."






Erev-evening
Shabbat-sabath
The Fifth Dimension-a club
freyer-someone who gets walked all over, a fool
Dai-Enough, stop
Ima-Mom
stam-it's nothing
nudnikim-nudges

there are

There are poems
and there are stories,
that are made of a single word.
Words like home,
or immigrant,
longing
or exile.

There are poems to whom if
you add a single thing⎯
they'll disintegrate,
or explode
leaving nothing behind,
but ever increasing
entropy.

Damned

So I get off the M15 Select Bus at 79th St, and see this woman running madly for the bus as it's pulling away from the curb. Feeling bad, I offer her my receipt so that she doesn't have to pay. She declines, explains that she has an unlimited Metrocard, and says "I'm surprised, I would have thought you'd be more aggressive about it."
I have no idea what she's talking about, until I look down, and remember I'm wearing a blue t-shirt with the collar torn out, and printed with (in large, white Hebrew letters,) "ETZEL ITZIK- MAKOM HAMIFGASH HA'ISRAELI - MIAMI". I think, "Even when you try to do something nice... damn, I hate bad stereotypes."

Nose

You finally got your nose fixed. Noone else ever noticed how crooked it really was, but you did.
You broke it when you fell off your skateboard at 12, or maybe when you got punched in front of that Chinese resturaunt near your high school at 16. Maybe it was when you were 23, and you swam into the wall of the pool at full speed, face first with flippers, because you were showing off to that girl… it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that every morning you’d stare at the bathroom mirror, half your face shaved and notice how lopsided you really were.
Now you got your nose fixed, and noone’s really noticed the difference. Even your wife, who loves you says you look the same, but now when you look in the mirror, razor in hand, half your face covered in foam, it’s a stranger who looks back.

Any Call

Any call
at seven a.m.
is not a good call.
Ed McMahon never calls
at seven a.m.
to say that you're a millionaire.
Your publisher doesn't
wake you to say
"you made the Times' Best Seller list".
Any call at seven a.m.
Is a dreaded call:
What hospital or- is it
already too late?
Can I even get a flight, or
car to the airport?
I'm out of clean underwear..
I'll never put off laundry again.
At seven a.m.
when the phone breaks your sleep,
be thankful if it's only
some drunken wrong number.

A Theoretical Conversation Between A Zen Master And His Student Regarding Sisyphus

“And what of Sisyphus? Is it true that his labors brought him nothing?”

“Nothing was gained.”

“Poor man. All that work for nothing.”

“Yes, all that work was for nothing.

I’d say he was quite fortunate in that.”

Hair

“The tub keeps backing up” I told my wife last night.

“Well, have you cleaned out the trap?”

I told her that I had.

“We share the drain with the Gundars

in 4H, don’t we?” I asked.

“Maybe they don’t have a hair trap—

maybe it’s from them.”

“well, call the super in the morning I guess.

maybe he can snake it, or pour some Drano down.”

This morning I saw our neighbor Joan;

she was paler than usual, and

thin, and her black hair, which

in Summer graced

the backs of her bare knees

was gone.

The chemo'd left blue rings

under her eyes.

Afterwards

Nostalgia,
or novelty would
propel me through the
“can’t sleep” streets,
but familiarity negates novelty
and ubiquity, nostalgia
so instead I look
for something to hold
something to push
deep into my pocket
but everything I find
falls to the ground
through my open fingers
my open grabbing fingers.

M102

He had the kind of mustache
that would
cause you to describe him
as a
guy with a mustache.
He wore a polyester shirt
tucked into
polyester pants,
and he
stood there
leaning over me.
It was hot out.
It was over a hundred degrees,
and he
stood there
leaning over me.
He had
both hands on the bar,
the bar above
his head on the
uptown M102.
I sat by the
window,
in the single seats
as he stood there
leaning over me
with his hands above his head
on the metal bar
with his mustache
in his polyester shirt
and his polyester pants.
It was hot out.
It was over a hundred degrees.
He smelled of garlic
and B.O.

For Amy Leigh Cutler

Was it you?
Was it you who zipped by on her
green fixed gear
smiling in the bus lane?
Was it you-
who waved insanely
like an excited sunflower
who'd spontaneously sprouted on
second avenue?

burial

In plastic bag
beneath the bathroom sink⎯
the lining of her womb

Some Older Entries Deleted From My Blog by "Blogger"

*The following are pieces that were deleted from my blog
by "Blogger". They were originally published between August and
September, 2009.

Cord

I’m vacuuming over by the
kitchen, and suddenly surprised by the length of the cord, (I’d thought
it was only 9 feet,) I look behind myself to see my wife holding the
plug in her hand, and she shouts to me over the whir of the motor,
“Something strange happened to me today”.

Gitty And Esther

“Mommy what does self-righjus mean?”
Gitty took one last drag off her cigarette before stabbing it out in
the styrofoam cup that held the sludge from Esther’s hot chocolate.
“It’s like your father, not letting us see each other more than twice a
month, and not letting you live with me because I refuse to wear a wig
and skirt, and keep Shabbes”, she wanted to say, but instead: “it’s
self-righteous, and it means, you think your way is the only right way
to do something.”
She watched as her daughter tried to select a color for Yogi’s picnic
basket from the crayon fragments scattered around her on the floor,
before settling on purple. “So what do you think you’ll want for dinner
mameleh? I bet we can have pizza delivered to our room, you want
pizza?”
As she passed the bay window on the way to the phone, she
surreptitiously parted the vinyl curtains and scanned the motel's
parking lot for the familiar white vans.
While the two waited for their dinner to arrive, Gitty lit another
cigarette, and studied the gas-station map, while Esther continued to
color Yogi.

Advice

“What the hell do I need with advice from a goddamned tea bag” I
thought. I got that fortune cookie on Tuesday night, and it says to me
“Good clothes open many doors. Go shopping.” I figured I needed some
new interview clothes, so I did. I bought a new tie, a new shirt to go
with it, and just for the hell of it, a new suit so I could make the
best impression.
Now, my rents due, and I’ve got three dollars and seventy eight cents
in my bank account until next month, so I go to the bank to see if I
can get an overdraft, and while the bank managers in the back office, I
see there’s this bowl of candy on his desk for anyone to take from, so
I take one, and I take the little red square Dove chocolate, even
though it’s the last one, and there on the inside of the red foil
wrapper, it says “Success comes to those who have no fear; simply leap
and the net will appear”, so before the manager even comes back, I get
up and leave. Just like that. I go next door with my last three bucks,
and I buy a cup of tea, the evening paper, and a lotto ticket. I open
the tea bag, and there, printed on the back of the little tag, it says
“Don’t believe everything you read”.

$5.00

Each story begins with a choice, one made either by or for its main
character. Consider Yaya. Yaya is a 40 something year old man who works
in garage; though he isn't supposed to accept tips personally, (there's
a lucite communal tip box for the benefit of the entire staff,) from
one customer to whom he's been exceptionally helpful, he accepts the
neatly folded five dollar bill pressed into his hand. Later that night,
he'll use it to buy himself one extra drink, which will effectively
keep him at the bar an extra 17 minutes; during that extra time, he
will meet his next girlfriend, or get in a fight. On the other hand, he
may use the extra cash in his pocket to buy himself two lotto tickets,
a cup of coffee, and a bag of Doritos.
If he chooses to save the bill, and use it that night at the bar, and
he meets his next girlfriend, perhaps she will become the love of his
life, marry him, give him two children, one of whom will attend
Princeton one day and earn a doctorate in physics, specializing in
magnetics, the other of whom will die of leukimia on her 11th birthday,
or maybe the woman will give him herpes.
If he gets into a fight, maybe he will accidentally kill the man who
started with him, or before the first punch, perhaps the two will
reconcile and become fast friends, and discover they are from the same
obscure part of Kenya.
Maybe one of the lotto tickets will win 2.00, or 34,000,000.00.
If it wins 2.00, maybe he will count himself lucky, bless God, and buy
himself a muffin to eat later for desert, or maybe he will buy himself
two scratch-offs, win nothing more, and curse himself for wasting 2.00
when he could have had a muffin. Or maybe he will win a million dollars
a year for life.
Each story begins with a choice, and with each choice there are a
million stories.

Click

You're drunk, and the cold feels like something else, as you stagger out of
her basement apartment, barefooted and bloodied. Damn it, she should
have listened when you told her to keep quiet.
The book in your hand is already falling apart, but you do your best to
keep the pages from scattering in the wind. "Just once more", you tell
yourself, and behind you, just a bit to your left you hear the click.

HELP WANTED

Applicants must be able to accept criticism, take being misinterpreted and misunderstood
with aplomb, have a high threshold for stress, and be comfortable
making life or death decisions. Extensive knowledge of world history,
politics and religions required. Executive experience preferred. Must
be multi-lingual, able to multi-task, and have advanced problem solving
capabilities. Work schedule is for 6 days a week.
Predecessor is exhausted but will thoroughly train replacement before
retiring.
Interested applicants may leave their curriculum vitae at any
synagogue, mosque, church, temple, ashram or ancient grove.

Shorty

I had a dog named Shorty once. I got him from the pound, because they said they were five
minutes away from killing him. Shorty had one eye, a coat of about 7 different colors,
and his back legs were just a little longer than his front ones, making
him look like he was always in the mood to play. My friend Meiron said
he looked like Frankenstein’s dog. When I went to pet Shorty for the
first time, he took a bite out of my left hand, but he must not have
liked the way I tasted, because he never bit me again. When we took him
to the park on Saturday afternoons, he would always chase other
people’s soccer balls and pop them, and when a lady soldier was bending
down to get something out of her backpack, Shorty bit her on the ass.
He must have liked the way she tasted, because he didn’t let go for a
really long time, even though she was screaming, and it took her
boyfriend, Meiron and me together to pull him off. Meiron said we were
probably the first people in the history of Independence Park, to be
kicked out and told never to come back.
When I met Neta at “The Moon” one Friday night, it was love at first
sight. Three days later she moved in, with a footlocker full of her
CDs, Books and clothes. When I picked her up from work on Tuesday
night, we came home to find her locker pried open, her CDs scattered
and scratched, her books torn to shreds and her clothes piled in the
four corners of the apartment: one pile had been shit on, one pissed
on, one vomitted on, and on the last pile was a very tired dog, on his
back, sound asleep.
“It’s him or me,” said Neta.
When we took him back to the pound, the lady smiled at me, took the
leash without a word and led Shorty into the back. As we walked out
into the bright afternoon sun, we heard her say, “Poor thing, we were
beginning to wonder how long you'd be away this time."

Impossible

You’re not one to give up easily, you tell yourself, as slowly, you ease your
left, then right foot into your own mouth. You swallow. Now, if you can
just manage to get your legs down you think, the rest will be a breeze…
you’ll show them all, and you slurp at your knees, but you can’t seem
to make any headway. Your back is on fire, and your jaw, throat and
stomach feel like they’re going to burst. “Tommorrow,” you tell
yourself, “tomorrow I’ll show them what happens when they say I can’t
do something…”

Boom

Let’s just say, the bus you’re on goes boom, and you survive, not only
survive, but you’re totally fine, like, not a scratch on you… now,
let’s just say, all around you, everyone is dead, there’s no way
they’re still breathing, and let’s just say, you’re walking through the
corpses, and instead of blood and guts spilling out of them, there’s
half a woman lying by your feet, and hanging out of her torso, where
her guts should be, there’s a bunch of CDs and a Walkman, and there, to
your left, is the chest of some kid popped open like a pan of jiffypop,
and where his heart and lungs should be, there are two slightly
deflated soccer balls, and a Sony PSP, and over by what used to be the
front of the bus, you see what used to be the driver, and he’s got a
book sticking out of his chest… so you pick up the book and open it,
and amid all the sirens, and the smoke, and flashing lights, you sit
down on the street and you read, and it says “Let’s just say, the bus
you’re driving goes boom…”

Second Hand Reminiscence

The song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” comes on the radio, and it reminds you of
her, and on the movie screen of your mind, you see her sitting alone on
the corner of her mother’s bed, listening, like you are, to Gali Atari,
and moved, like you are, because it reminds her of her childhood in
Israel.
Fade to flashback she’s lanky and nine, sun tanned, pigtailed, sandaled
and shorted, and her brother, Tzion, is there; carelessly they’re
devouring enormous yellow and red summer peaches that drip down their
chins and stain their shirts. Though you're not there, she looks at you
and smiles a drippy smile, the peach’s stone apparent under her cheek.
As the song ends, she’s there once again, sitting at the foot of her
mother’s bed: neck bent, head down, face obscured by that mess of
curls, waiting for something to begin.

Fidget

When Fidget was in kindergarten, his teacher gave him his nickname because he couldn’t sit
still. He kicked his feet through naptime, drummed his fingers through
story time, and, rather than coloring in his coloring book like all the
other children, he’d play rockets and missles with his crayons. When
Fidget was 22, he won a trip to London by being the millionth customer
to walk into a supermarket, and when he visitted Sotheby’s, unable
contain his fidgetting, he accidentally bought Queen Anne’s sleigh bed
for 93,000 dollars at an auction.
When Fidget went to a benefit dance for Hadassah, he met his future
wife, Na’ama, who thought he was funny because, even though he was
sitting on his own, he seemed to be enjoying himself, dancing in his
seat; when she introduced herself to him, she told him how impressed
she was that even though he was there without a date, he seemed to know
how to have a good time by himself, not like all the guys who just
stood around, lined up against the wall trying to look cool. Every
night in bed, Na’ama would think that Fidget wanted to make love,
because he would shake his leg against her; she interpretted it as him
reminding her of his presence, and not wanting him to feel rejected,
she’d start to stroke his thigh. Six months after they were married in
Cyprus, their daughter, Miri was born.
When the terrorists broke into their house, they hid in the attic;
While the terrorists went room to room, shooting their guns, throwing
handgrenades, Na’ama held her hand over their daughter’s mouth, and
Fidget sat crosslegged, holding them both tightly, but his left foot
was free to fidget.

Getting Used to Anything

I guess it’s true what they say, you really can get used to anything. I
mean, I’ve been here a week and it’s cool and all, but it really got on
my nerves at first, how wherever you looked, just on the fringes of
your vision, everything would go all fuzzy like, and I mean, other than
that, it looks pretty much like my old place, except, you can’t find
anything good on tv, only mushy love stories and Disney cartoons, and
even watching boxing is pointless, because at the end of the game, both
guys win and all they do is hug each other, and you can’t get really
good schoog on
your falafel, no matter how much you put, it’s just never that hot, and
even though I threw myself on a grenade to save a bunch of the guys in
my unit, the girls around here are never impressed, so I haven’t gotten
laid simce I’ve been here, but like I say, I guess you really can get
used to anything.

Jellybeans

“It’s the speckled white ones that send you into the next world” says
the candy lady with the pretty blue eyes. You hold the little wood box
in your hand. It’s made to look like a miniture orange crate, and it’s
full of different colored jellybeans.
“What do the purple ones do?”
“That’s a mystery” she says, “I’m only allowed to tell you about the
white speckled ones".
You take your candy home, and the first one you taste is like a trip to
New Mexico; small octagons appear on your ceiling in vibrant shades of
silver, yellow and white, and you go through them. There’s a vague
taste of blue corn tortillas to this one, you think.
Back at your kitchen table, you choose the next one; its surface looks
like liquid opal, and you think to yourself, how could the plain white
speckled one be more special than this? Tentatively, you taste it, and
you’re sitting in a movie theater in Pittsburgh, Pa., and it’s 1943.
There’s smoke swirling around your head, and Micky Rooney is just about
to lay one on Judy Garland, when you feel a Jujyfruit hit the back of
your head. You turn around, and see your microwave flashing at you.
Now, there’s simply no holding you back. You pick up the white speckled
one, and pop it into your mouth.
When the neighbors complain about the stink, the super breaks down your
door, and when they find you on the kitchen floor, you’re still
smiling, with a chunk of meteor sticking out of your forehead.

Grandma’s Chair

After Daddy died, Grandma moved in. Since she had a hunched back, she couldn’t
sleep in a bed like normal people. Instead, she sat in our old easy
chair in the corner, so that she wouldn’t be in the way. As Mom and
everyone grieved, she sat. She sat through summer, when we had a
blackout, and the air conditioning stopped working and it was 100
degrees in our apartment, and she sat through fall when we had company
over for the first time since the funeral.
One day Grandma said, "I feel like this chair is swallowing me", as
little by little she became smaller and smaller.
When I asked Mom, she explained, “it’s just her scoliosis; she used to
be much taller, but that’s what happens. You just shrink. Plus, she
doesn’t eat much.”
One day, when we were doing spring-cleaning, Mom handed me a broom and
told me to go sweep the living room. When I got over to the corner
where Grandma’s chair was, she wasn’t there.
“Where’s Grandma?” I asked. Mom came into the room, with her yellow
gloves, carrying her bucket and sponge, and wiped a stray hair out of
her face with the back of her wrist. “I don’t know,” she said, “she
must have gone home or something.”
I sat down in Grandma’s chair. It was much cushier than I’d remembered
it. I leaned on the handle of the broom and cried. She never even said
goodbye.

Detritis

Last night my brother in law died. When we went to the apartment he’d been
staying in, we found his wallet, cellphone, keys, slippers, clothes,
and a half crushed, half smoked pack of Marlboro 100s. It was in truth,
the Marlboros that were the saddest thing to find: something so
personal, and so disposable: a half smoked pack, from a half lived
life.

The Trouble With Cheap Tampons

"Shit"
Ma’ayan was in the bathroom and I asked what the problem was.
"I just got my period and I'm out of tampons. I hate to do this to you,
but will you run out and get me a box?"
It was 11:45 at night, and the only place open in our neighborhood was
the corner bodega. When I got there, there was one box of tampons. They
were in a dusty faded red and white striped box, looked about 20 years
old, and the writing was in some language I'd never seen before, but
they were definately tampons, as far as I could tell. I bought them and
shuffled home to my dear girlfriend. She was a little grossed out when
she saw that the box was so dusty and old. "They're gross!
I could get toxic shock or something!"
Nonetheless, she used one, and we went to bed.
The TV or my need to pee or both woke me up at 4:34 and I groggily made
my way to the bathroom. When I got back, there was Ma’ayan sound
asleep, naked and spread eagle on the bed, and there, poking out of her
vagina was not the usual white string, but something that looked like
the tip of a tiny lion's tail, and it was wagging.
"Ma’ayan!" she snored at me in response. I opened up my cellphone and
shined the blue light on her crotch. It was definately a tail of some
kind. I gave it a little tug, and suddenly saw a little cloven hoof
sticking out below a small brown hairy rear. As I pulled more, Ma’ayan
began to wake up. "What are you doing? We can't have sex.. go back to
sleep."
"But there's a little horse or a goat or somthing in your vagina!"
She sat bolt upright, turned on the light, and looked down, and
suddenly began to sob, but not like she was upset or even shocked or
scared... she actually seemed happy.
"I knew if I waited long enough, I'd get one... don't you see? It’s the
giraffe I wished for on my sixth birthday!" and she pulled it the rest
of the way out.
There, sitting on the bed, between my girlfriend's open thighs, was a
3-inch tall baby giraffe, trying to get its land legs and failing
miserably.
"He’s so cute!" she squeeled. He was, but...
"I want to call him Benny. Quick, go get me some milk from the fridge."
It's been 3 weeks now, and Benny has become part of the family. He's
brought us closer than we ever were, and he's not even high maintenance
or anything. The trouble is, he's now nearly 9 feet tall. The Karils,
our downstairs neighbors have started to complain that they hear
clopping on the floor at strange hours of the night, and plaster is
falling on their heads, and our chandelier, the one my mother bought us
for the new apartment is broken. The other day, Mr. Karil cornered me
in the elevator, and I had to tell him that my 300 pound Aunt Margi is
staying with us and she’s a slightly deranged aging flamenco dancer...
I had to promise that we'd only let her practice in the afternoon.
Also, the ashtray that became a litterbox that's now a sandbox that's
sitting in the middle of our living room is becoming insufficient, and
since Ma’ayan works days, and I stay home, I'm the one who has to empty
it 3 or 4 or 5 times a day, and I've already stuffed up the toilet
several times. Giraffe poop doesn't smell much but it's pretty big and
can really stuff a toilet. Don’t quote me on this, but I think we're
going to end up having to move to Jersey or something soon.

The Episode With The Lizard

At first it didn’t register. It’s like, when you see something out of the
corner of your eye and your subliminal mind tells you in great detail
why you couldn’t possibly be seeing what you’re seeing, so your
concious mind, the wimp that it is, just says “ok, you know better”,
and gives in.
But there it was; on the top edge of the black marble backsplash, in my
kitchen on the Upper East Side, was a green Anole, looking like he had
every right in the world to be just where he was. Searching
surreptitiously for something to coax him into, I considered the
possibilities that might have brought him to me, but the more I
considered, the less sense it made. The last time I’d been in Miami was
over a year ago, and I was fairly certain that, had he stowed away in
one of my suitcases, he’d have either been discovered by now, or, more
likely, dead, a sneaker casualty; but like I said, here--
incontrovertibly, (and apparently in good health,) he was. I settled on
a black oblong plastic take-out container from Noodles 28, and poked
two small holes in its’ lid with a pairing knife before gently scooping
him up between top and bottom. Figuring I’d take him where we always
take mice to be released from our “have-a-heart” traps, I slipped on my
top-siders and headed out the front door towards the East 86th street
entrance of Central Park.
“So, have you done anything about finding a job yet? What about school?
Are you doing anything about going back to school?”
Annoyed, I was about to answer when I realized I wasn’t on my
cellphone, and that it was my perforated take out container that
talking to me.
“You know, your life is just passing you by. You’re not getting
younger, and I’m just concerned your going to wake up one day in your
sixties, and realize you’re still waiting for your life to begin”
“Shut up.” I hissed, “You’re a lizard. What would you know about waking
up at sixty and realizing anything? Besides, I’m waiting to hear back
on something I submitted to The New Yorker.”
I quickened my pace towards the park, while it occurred to me, the two
smoking barbers I’d passed on eighty-eighth and third had interupted
their own conversation and were staring at me.
“You know,” he said, “ you can wait forever. In the end, nothing really
comes from waiting. Why don’t you call them back? Be proactive for
crissakes! And what about that volunteer position you were talking
about? You know, a lot of valuable contacts can be made that way.”
“The guy from The Central Park Conservancy already emailed me back. He
said they only have high school students volunteering in the office in
the Summ… I’M TALKING TO A LIZARD!!!”
“And? And what if I was a guy with a long white beard and a staff?
Would you take me more seriously then? Look, don’t let the package fool
you guy, I’ve been around a bit.”
“Yeah? Like where?”
My take-out container sighed impatiently. “For 24 years, from the day
you and your family moved to Miami, I sat in your room, just behind
that red toy clock on top of your bookcase. I watched you throughout
junior high, high school, college… all those part-time jobs you got and
lost, every time you came home depressed after school, or a bad date,
or just a bad day… I’d crawl out onto the ceiling over your bed and
read over your shoulder when you were writing in that sketchbook of
yours, I read every word. You were good, morose, but good. You showed
promise. You had keen insight. But you never could get over what
everyone on the outside kept saying… you’re not normal blah blah blah,
you’re weird, you insist on doing everything differently, just to be
different, anything possible just to not fit in… you don’t know how to
take direction… and what did you do? You ate it all up. You believed
them! You let them get inside you, until there wasn’t anything left.
I’ll tell you, it makes me sick what they do, these self-riteous
cannibals of the spirit. They took you, a creative, dynamic,
intelligent and sensitive individual, and, because they were afraid of
that side of themselves, or maybe, who knows? Maybe because they
were jealous, they did everything in their power to crush it in you.
And now what do you do? You spend your days in your room watching t.v…
or maybe you poke around on the Internet, or you write a clever
sentence or two in your blog. You’re wasting your life! Honestly, it’s
so frustrating.”
Stopping for a red light on the median of Park Avenue, I sighed, a wave
of something that felt like sadness and the realization that I was,
even after so many years of therapy, living the victim of others’
conceptions. “So, what do I do now? I’m lost. I feel like I don’t have
anything inside me. No ideas come. And if I do get an idea, it’s like I
just don’t have the mental energy to do anything with it. So tell me,
please, what do I do?”
The take-out was quiet for about ten seconds, then,
“Eat me.”
“Huh?”
“Eat me.”
“What?”
“EAT ME!”
“I’m a vegetarian!”
“I’m green”
“You’re not exactly asparagus though you know.”
“If you eat me, the weight of your past will become like steam; in its’
dissipation, you’ll become light yourself. You’ll have drive, vision,
and clarity. You’ll finally get over every failure you allowed yourself
to be defined by. If you eat me, you can let all that go.”
I opened up the white plastic box and the lizard crawled out onto my
cupped hand. I looked into his face and he looked back at me and
blinked. I closed my eyes.

New Recruit

He just goes to me, “You’re going to misunderstand what’s about to happen to you, and for
that, I am profoundly sorry.” and sticks the knife in, and that’s it,
game over. Except that it wasn’t over at all.
So, what happened see, I'm on my way home from Food Emporium, when I
see this homeless guy I kind of know. Well, I don’t really know him,
but whenever I see him and his dog, (he has a dog) I usually give him a
couple of bucks or buy him some food or something. This time, I was
broke, and I’d just used the last of my foodstamps for the month, which
sucked big time, because it was only the seventh. So, I see him sitting
out front and it’s freezing outside, I mean like in the teens and
windy, and he’s sort of huddling behind his cart inside 3 or 4 coats
and when he sees me, he says hi because I usually give him some money
or buy him some food. So I notice his dog isn’t with him, but there’s
this other homeless guy, maybe 60 or 70, (it’s hard to tell) talking to
him, and he’s really skinny and he's wearing this old looking army
jacket but he looks kind of peaceful and stuff, so I ask my friend,
well, he’s not really my friend, but you know what I mean, where his
dog is, and he tells me he’s been leaving his dog with a friend because
its been so cold and this way he can go into the subway at night or go
to the shelter and stuff...so, I’m standing there, talking to him and I
feel a little guilty, you know, standing there holding groceries, on my
way home, so I tell him I don’t have any money this time, but I just
got him some cheese and a bottle of water, and I take a package of
string cheese and a bottle of water and give it to him, and tell him I
just used the last of my food stamps, maybe so he realizes it’s kind of
a sacrifice for me or something… then the other guy smiles at me, and I
smile back, thinking he must see that I’m a good person or something,
not like all the rich snobs that live around here, and I say to the two
of them have a good night and stay warm.. so I’m on my way home now,
and I turn onto my block and suddenly he’s right there in front of me,
and I have no idea how he got there, because I just left him in front
of Food Emporium, and he’s got a knife, so the thought “how the hell
did he get in front of me so fast?” is replaced by “who's this asshole
in front of me with a knife?” and he just goes to me “ You’re going to
misunderstand what’s about to happen to you, and for that, I am
profoundly sorry.” and that's it.. it's like a flash, no pain even, and
I’m here, in this stupid waiting room, and some guy's tellin' me I'm
about to be drafted into Heaven's army or something, because there’s
some kind of angelic war going on..
So, what about you? How’d you get here?

dark cherries
drip through the metal colander
stain my kitchen table

Distant מרחק

עצוב לי היום
שנינו נוסעימ במכונית
ואת יושבת בשקט
אני שואל אותך
"מה ניש?"
אבל השקט נישאר בינינו
כמו כוכב אחר
ואת אומרת לי
שאני רחוק



Sad today
we're driving together in the car
and you sit in silence.
I ask you
"what's up?"
but the silence sits between us
like another planet
and you tell me,
I'm distant.

6/9/11 pt.i

the sweat of seven
million New Yorkers sticks to
the afternoon air.

6/9/11 pt.ii

It’s that time again
five p.m.
hottest day of the
so-far Summer, and I’m
barefoot again
bare armed too
The sidewalk sings me its
five o’clock
still too damned hot
hotter tomorrow blues

6.1.11

A yawn- no sleep since
four a.m. Blanket moving
with her steady breath.

5.30.11: E 88th St. btwn. 1st and 2nd

Crickets and cicadas
buzz in fuzzy yellow sun
Flowers sweat and wither in the hazy Summer noon.

5.31.11: E88th St.

Barefoot on a six-p.m. sidewalk
The heat of Summer's day hovers 30 floors above.
around me
fat mosquitoes circle
but do not bite.

5/25/11

The neighbors are fighting again;
slammed next doors shake our bedroom walls.

CPW@86th St.: C train platform

Uptown bound
ground above me quakes
On the DT tracks, a woman’s hat.

Big Bang

Where is our big bang?
Where is the creative chaos who’s
cunt will bear our true brave new world?
Bogged down in the racket of a
hundred million iPhones
Lost
in the pages
of Facebook

i
am not a Phone
a Mac
or a PC

My face
may be a book,
but for my status
you’ll have to ask me

Hey
Step away from that screen
Look up
The world is burning!
Chagall’s horse has
long since shat out
Nero's violin
but just for us
they cleaned it off
electrified it
and plugged us in
and noone has noticed
the bitter stench
of our collective burning
ever since

Jerusalem is Beige at Noon, and at Sunset, Gold

Jerusalem is
beige at noon, and at
sunset, gold.

But for
mattresses laid out on
flat summer roofs
sheets,jeans and washrags flapping on
laundry lines
blue and white flags or
“HA'AM IM HAGOLAN” banners
hanging from open windows or
draping from balcony railings
_____________________(for whom?)
Jerusalem is
beige at noon, and at
sunset, gold.

But for
souvenirs heap'd up on sagging card tables or
hanging from walls in the tunnel like shuk-
_____________________Jewellry, and sandals,
_____________________narghilla and t-shirts
But for
wind tossed trash dancing
down three-o-clock-alleyways, &
cats who dart out from
cool parked car shade

But for the
long and slowly stretching
dark shadows of inevitability,
Jerusalem is
beige at noon, and at
sunset, gold.




_________________ha'am im hagolan - "the people are with the Golan"
_________________shuk- open air market place heavily frequented by tourists
_________________narghila- hookah

Shoko beSakit

She’s going to Jerusalem she says,
next month, end of June.
“Bring me a shoko besakit” I say,
knowing she’ll never get it through.
Inevitably, the bag would explode,
_______dousing
underwear and t-shirts in chocolate milk.
Plus, a Palestinian, she’d
never get it through customs,
a matter of grave national security! So
she suggests instead, she’ll enjoy one for me
there, snipping off the corner of the
baggie with her teeth, sipping
cold chocolate milk in the
Yerushalmi sun⎯
maybe in Independence Park. Finally, I say,
“Don’t forget the lachmaniyah.”

______________shoko besakit – chocolate milk sold in a sealed plastic bag
______________Yerushalmi – pertaining to Jerusalem
______________lachmaniyah – a roll, often eaten with shoko basakit

Girl

Seen from the bus
whilst at the bus stop
Sixty Second Street
through opened back doors
across busy sidewalk
girl sitting in Starbuck’s
window papercup coffee
looking out at me
Now the doors close
but the gaze isn't broken
though behind two sets of windows
she’s a galaxy away.

things missed in exile

Things that are missed in exile:
The shape of the sky and that "certain slant of light"
Specific fruits and ways of eating them
like watermelon with salty cheese, and
cactus pears
peeled and cut on the roadside, or
fresh from the cactus with
invisible glass needles
(only way to rid them from your hands:
rub them together with dry sand)
Ways of drinking coffee: black and thick as mud
Sheets of eggs sold by
old men on the sidewalk
Artikim on the beach and
sunflower seeds from the kiosk
Brown dust that coats everything
The ease of washing floors:
hot soapy water
thrown from a bucket and
squeegied into the
corner drain
News on the bus every hour on the hour

In New York, you don't hear
the news on the bus.
On second thought,
that's something I don't
really miss at all.

Mud

Children of brown bear
children of puma
Dig for dried berries where
Coyote has lead us
Under new mud
Under dry needle blanket
under bald bush
Under the pine
We steal these from the birds
the hungry Winter birds

Letter to C

Micro tornadoes of
white hole punch gingko blossoms
_______whorl in the cobblestoned park
The heat of the sweat drenched day
_______is subsiding
Wishing we were sitting together
at our sidewalk cafe
swiping at evening flies
drinking limonana

These Things By Their Names

Calling things by their names
is not the same thing as
calling them by
their nature. For instance:

to say,
Gleditsia Triacarthus
& Quercus Rubra

is not the same as saying

Honey Locust
& Red Oak

which once again
say nothing so much as

________________“Majestic outline,
________________ filtered sun
________________ copper in Autumn”
____________________________ (Honey Locust)

or

________________ “Symmetry and color
________________ street or shade tree
________________ a shelter for wildlife”
______________________________ (Red Oak)

Dogwood
_______does not bark
&
Crocuses
_______don’t croak

but Cornus florida Rubra
explodes with fat, pink, spring blossoms

and

Crocus Sativus L.
sleeps through the Winter
under snow covered earth
to finally rise, a
flaming yellow phoenix
when the world begins to stir

4/16/2011: Mt. Sinai Hospital, 11th Floor

How I love high Windows on a
dark rainy day when the
city's colors run like purple
fount'n pen ink on the
pages of a notebook left
out in the rain

Shitty Day

Shitty day
the computers crashed
All the way home
you stood on the train

Take off your hoodie and
throw it on the chair
kick off your sneakers and
hand me that scrunchie
I’ll stand here behind you
sweep back your long hair
make high-home-ponytail
and kiss the back of your neck

Your hair smells like winter

Shifting Sands

With the most sincere effort I'm able to muster, I fail to understand how socialism could be construed as anything but a common benefit. At face value, it means nothing more than taking the necessary steps to support one's society, ensuring the well-being of each and every one of
its constituents. It's a holistic approach that takes into account both the needs of those who are able to provide for themselves- without diminishing their ability to succeed financially, and those who are unable to provide for themselves, and therefore require assistance.
The problem is, we have been duped by the "American dream"; the promises of a mansion with rolling green hills, a seven figure bank account and garage filled with elite status symbol cars has kept us salivating over a reality few of us will ever see. In fact, we are so invested in the idea that we will one day be wealthy, that we preemptively guard our theoretical future wealth from any potential threat (such as taxes,) at our own expense. We fail to understand that by voting for or supporting the plutocracy (read: “G.O.P."), we are actually ensuring that we'll NEVER find ourselves with any more wealth than we presently have, and in fact are likely to lose even more.
Part of the problem is this proclivity to divide everything into "us" vs. "them". Society is a body, complete with interdependent systems. When there is an infection in one part, without proper care, it will eventually spread, ultimately causing catastrophic systemic failure. Our current society is infected, and thus far bereft of proper care.
In the last century, we were the most upwardly mobile society on the globe. Our diversified economy, built on domestic manufacturing jobs and a strong balance of import and export industry provided such a surplus of well paying jobs that we had the largest middle class in the
world and no debt to speak of. In fact, at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, we were firmly "in the black".
Flash forward a decade: our mobility trails behind England, China, and even India. Our middle class has all but disappeared, and we are three trillion dollars in debt. Our leaders tell us that each corporate tax break, every industrial deregulation and social program cut is a necessary “shared sacrifice”we must bear, if we are ever to climb out of our current morass. In
fact, it's exactly this mindset that has gotten us here, and- make no mistake, will keep us here.
Unless we change our collective paradigm by recognizing that we are an interdependent system wherein each and every part is absolutely integral, (yes, even a competitive economy,) we will continue to fail. The social body will sicken and ultimately die. We will lose every social support we've come to rely upon; medical care that needn't be paid out of pocket at time of service, public education, even police, fire and emergency, will become things of the past.
Until we rectify our ways with drastic measures such as (a), insisting on a progressive tax for all (b), encouraging corporations to bring manufacturing jobs stateside again by offering incentives to do so and enforcing penalties for refusal, and (c) supporting the regrowth of our middle class by any and all means necessary, this decaying body will crumble from the inside, until, even the ivory towers that are occupied by the plutocrats themselves will crumble and fall,

built as they are,
upon this foundation of
violently shifting sand.

Spring

Mist still blows
______from mouths like smoke
Gingkos litter sidewalks with
______wet white confetti
Cherryblossom & Dogwood
Red Oak & Honey Locust
_________________________Tulips too,
_________________________on Park Avenue


Potholes are also a sign of Spring

D.O.T. workers close off city blocks
and with 450 Cats & 6 ft. screeds
square cut the craters
& pour hot black gravel
poundit all in &
rollit down hard

They've done it for years
_____the exact same way-
this temporary fix they call
_____"hope and pray"
but next Winter the salt,
_____tire chains & plows will
chunkit all up again
& the work will repeat


_________________________Fingers always turning
_________________________the wheel of the world

meditation

National pride
Ethnic pride
Religious pride
Atheistic pride
Cultural pride
Subcultutal pride
Professional pride
Doing well pride
Not doing well pride
Identity pride
Lots of money pride
No money pride
Big house pride
Making do pride
Expensive watch pride
Expensive car pride
Expensive clothes pride
Status symbol pride
Better than "X" pride
In good shape pride
Being right pride
Invested in the shell
The empty hollow shell
All substitutes for self - which is
Nothing real at all

3/29/11: Washington Sq.

In sunspot warm
small body learning
to balance to move to walk
Knees all green from
______falls on grass
Tripping toes stop in
______pavement cracks
Uncoordinated feet
______refuse to cooperate
Arms down
stiff at sides
Laughing
Chasing two fat pigeons

Kerhonkson Haiku

Bad news comes, but
seldom reaches me here amidst
the whispering pines.

but that I had a creek to sleep beside

Apogee moon sits
on a hill, guiding me home
through whispering pines.

3/18/11

There is a persistent ticking as from a clock.
I only hear it when I sit on my mat.
Ignore it and it grows
search out its source and it disappears.
Through the open north window, a sparrow's thirrip
calls me back.

Crossing 82nd
Somewhere a bitter stench
A throat full of death

For Yuyutsu RD Sharma

From the world- “away”
you’ll return to your home
hug your children
make love to your wife
take your own shower
drink your black tea
eat the food you’ve missed
read your newspaper
note the afternoon light—
how it has its own color
note the Kathmandu air—
how it has its own shape
see your close friends
pass out gifts to be envied
re-establish your bonds
to place
to time
and to old familiar comfort
only too soon,
to be leaving again

For C.H.

We sit together
quietly sip coffee
Conversations come and go
but talk is unimportant.
By silence
our friendship is not diminished,
nor by talk, made deeper
but with time simply spent in company,
its substance ever grows.

3/13/11

Out back, behind our building is a courtyard. There are trellises- painted green, wooden planters, and a few plastic chairs. All this is set on a vast (for Manhattan,) concrete rectangle, with a shuffleball court at one end.
Our last superintendent, Maxwell, took joy in keeping it up. Throughout his years of service, the trellises were covered in vines, the planters overflowing with green in Summer, and tulips in early Spring, and the concrete slabs of the yard itself swept daily. Even the iron furniture was painted each May. Since however, he was retired several years ago, his successor, who does not share Maxwell’s passion, has not kept it up, and entropy and weather have gotten the better of things.
When, while in the city I wish to meditate outside, I set my cushion down at the most derelict end of the courtyard. There’s a rough wall there— a scar left when a public school was torn down in 1967, to build the apartment building I live in, and a low ledge to lean my back against.


Cigarette butts left
in potted plant: small reverence
for growing things.

After The Alarm

We lay in bed
facing one another
stroke belly
and thigh
elbow
and breast
and keep
the inevitable day
at bay

Following Coyote

In headlights
______________as if
projected on some screen
coyote
_______(the trickster?)
leads me o'er mountain road
where I follow
slowly ____home

11/3/11: 8th @ 5th: "Fucking Sheep"

for Chuck


"Fucking sheep" you called them—
_____________________those
who damn red lights
_____________________cross
suicide streets on
__________ Blackberry or iPhone

"Fucking sheep" you said
___________________I said

"You know, they call that
______sheep worrying"
__________________but you
weren't in the mood to laugh
__________________as you
stepped off the curb
damned the red light
damned yellow taxi
damned the damned world

3/11/11: Prima Vera

Sparrows in my garden
hunt for twigs: new nests
for the birds' new year.

R.O.Z. pt. ii

Soggy Sunday morning
No TV to bark in the corner
The neighbors have gone to church
But for a siren
________________tens of
blocks away _______All is still

The rain drips from rusting fire escapes
onto the concrete courtyard
Someone shifts a clay flower pot
________________in its
terra cotta saucer— It couldn’t be
____anything else________ &
in the distance, you can almost hear
wakes ____spread across the
___top___ sheet
of the East River____Or
is that
____the city’s breath again?

For Lu Wu

You asked what I meant
when I said to you, that
your photos had "editorial voice".
What I meant to say—
what I should have said
is your photos don't look like
stock photography, or some
souless postcard with a
"Wish you were here".
What I meant to say,
is that
there you are
pointing your lens at
Chomolungma*
casually chatting
with gods.



* The Tibetan name for Mt. Everest

Bad Hair Days

Getting older,
afraid to cut my long hair off
There’s just so much less time
to grow it back now
than back when I
was young

17
shaved my whole head clean
on a whim
some people thought
I had cancer
(it was the 80s, and
unheard of back then)

folks like to say that
as we age
we become more patient,
and I tell myself,
after all,
it’s only hair, but

the next three years
if the truth be told,
seem very long
as I’d be growing it out again
& measured as they’d be
in dissatisfaction
over something as unimportant
and effemeral,
as bad hair days

3/1/11: Guggenheim Pavilion, Mt. Sinai Hospital

Quietly feeding a small brown sparrow
bits from a peanut split off with my
thumbnail
in the surgical waiting room
of the Guggenheim Pavilion
He rejects the pieces he deems too big
tossing them from his beak
with a shake of his head

A girl in black tights
and high heeled boots
quickly walks by
scaring him into
noisy flight

3/1/11

Sitting beneath an old oak tree
Fifth Avenue, One-Hundred-First Street
Winter's almost over
The park is showing signs of rebirth
Readers on benches
Joggers on paths
Shoots amidst the
hillside scrub
I'm eating my breakfast—
peanuts mixed with raisins
You're across the street,
upstairs, on a table
with an IV in your arm
Counting this, you'll have had
nine surgeries
over the past three years
I'd say it averages out to
three per year, but it
hasn't been that neat
We spent last Summer
together at Cornell-Presbyterian
It was your heart then
now it's your left eye
Shivering in the cold, I
stand to zip my coat

A siren shatters
the quiet; I wait for news
on a sun warmed bench

Neta

My feet remember
the stones of Jerusalem
walking in Summer
my sandals in hand
down Yoel Solomon
up the midrechov
& coffee from Bonker's
in Kikar Tzion

sitting at tables
outside The Village Green
singing old songs
'til three a.m.

My feet remember
the grass in the gan—
Independence Park
& sticky green plums

& I remember you wrapping my
red jacket 'round your waist
one cold October night
when you'd gotten your period
a hotel clerk let us
clean up in the bathroom
even though we were "freakim"
in from off the street

I remember "the moon"
& those muggy bored nights
bumming cigarettes
from the American Yeshiva kids

& I remember that morning
I was racing to work
at a quarter to eight
and that terrible call
asking me if I was
sitting down

Averno

Peeling a sale price sticker from a book
a book by the poet, Louise Glück
a book of poesies
a book of used-to-bes
a book of wonders like
small volcanic seas

Such a pity though, at 5.98
that this wonderful book
should meet such a fate :
the book "bargain bin"
in the Empire State!

10/98: Working as a Tour Guide in Jerusalem

Walking atop the walls of old Jerusalem:

_____"This is the Damascus Gate
______and this— this is the Jaffa
______and if you look to your left
__________you'll see
______the Tower of David

______"The Western Wall's
_________down that way
_______as well as the
_______Dome of the Rock
_______and there⎯ _where you see
_________that arch,
_______that we call The Hurva"

Each measured step
the young Germans took
was light, reverential,
as if they felt
they were walking on glass
and carried in their backpacks
like stones,
their grandparents' sins.

R.O.Z. pt. i (2/18/11: Union Sq. South)

The quiet rushing—
beneath the sidewalk vendors calling
beyond the waves of cellphone talking
past footfall percussion and sneaker shuffle
under car honks bus hydrolics subway rumble

The quiet rushing
The city's breath
The river of Zen

What am I
this spirit /mind
These eyes to see
these ears to hear
this skin to touch
Experience collected?
or even for its own sake—
What am I
shoes worn
things seen
places been
people known
unimportant
everything
I am

The desk at which I read and write is simple,
just a low table, 8 or 9 inches off the floor.
On it, are a few favorite books:
Richard Wright’s “Haiku”, Lu Chi's "Wen Fu" and “The Poems of T’ao Ch’ien”
at the moment, also coffee, pen and notebook
and a clipping in a teacup for company.

I sit before my desk on a cushion on the floor
and thinking of nothing special, I realize
how easily it can all be taken apart:
the books can be repatriated to the shelf
the teacup clipping to a sunlit sill, even
the table neatly folded into the closet.

How easily death breaks down the things we build.

O, crooked stick! my
aching back, how will you help
me from my cushion?

Quietly I lie here wide awake
covers to my chin against the
open window cold
watch you as you swallow pills, strip
off your purple sleepshirt
now naked in the blue becoming
yellow morning light

2/14/11: Kerhonkson, Samsonville Rd.

roadside brown brush scrub
brown hawk lifts a snake
slick and black
a meal on the fly

T.V.
switched on
on a
quiet
morning
is a
boisterous stranger
invading the apartment.

On reading Lu Chi's "The Art of Writing"

Now that the stalks
have been brought from the fields
Now that the chaff
has been stripped from the grain
Now that the grain
has been ground on the mill
The bread has been baked
and the meal has been eaten
Now that stomachs are full
and eyes shut in sleep on the
sated faces of my contented family
I'll return to my fields
plant new seeds

What's the use after all
in leaning on my plow?

The Mother’s Stick Sutra

I dreamed that I’d gone
to my parents’ house, the
house I’d grown up in

to get the walking stick
I’d carved for my mom
at some point many
many years ago

But when I got there, the
stick was hollowed—
Termites buzzed in it
and it it was weak—
wouldn’t support me
now when I needed it.

The past will not neces-
sarily support
the present

The present will not neces-
sarily support
the future

The stick had been fine
for whom it'd been made
& when I'd made it, but

The past is a memory
Now it was useless

Shop windows
hawking pastels
force Spring into
Winter mind

Firm denial
of the now

Slow rain
icicle branches
glass trees
cast rainbows

Soon it will be Spring.