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June 4th, 2008
10:06 am - Hope
A little hope
is a dangerous thing.
In a way,
it is safer to remain
disillusioned and bitter,
because it keeps your expectations
low. I want to hope
that Obama is elected president
and that if Obama is elected president
our country will shift
back in the right direction.
But I am not convinced.
I cannot dare to hope
because I do not share his faith
in my fellow citizens.
I spend too much time in sports chatrooms
and listening to people in
Texas and Florida. I am not
convinced that many people
in this country
would not be happy
to see us become a theocracy.
And I am not convinced
that many people
in this country
would not be happy to see me,
my Shema-saying self
my woman-marrying self
emigrate or be closeted
forever.
I am not convinced
that the rot
this country
has become
is not within.
(This poem was inspired by the 3/28/08 Real Time with Bill Maher, in which he said: "Do you think it’s really just the neocons, just the Bush Administration, or is there a rot in America, America itself, that’s a lot deeper? A lot of people, I think, in blue states and places that vote that way, would think, “Oh, yeah, we get rid of the Bushes and, gosh, America returns to that America we used to love and think about with – with fondness.” But, I don’t know. Don’t you think the rot is a little deeper than just the Bush Administration?")
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May 30th, 2008
11:55 am - Not sure what I think of this one
Ever have one of those days
when the Apocalypse seemed imminent?
Two trains collide, and trapping one driver
until her death. A cop opens fire
on a man in Boston Common
who had only a fake gun on him.
A crane collapses in New York City
killing several people.
Tomorrow, you wonder what will happen.
The Spurs won't still be playing,
and that's affecting your mood
more than it should. Will the Red Sox
ever win on the road again?
Will the sun be shining? Will your
dinner guests back out
this week as well?
Will the tests come back benign
or will more treatment be needed?
So much uncertainty
So much sudden tragedy
Makes you feel fragile
Makes you feel needy
Makes you feel blessed.
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May 21st, 2008
09:58 am - Ode to Jim's (for Bryan Mealer)
There was this kid,
I hardly remember his name
but he wrote a poem
which captured the spirit of high school
sitting in our diner till 4 AM
writing bad poetry
smoking and filling our lungs
with angst. Seventeen years later
no one remembers him
but his poem endures.
I want to write a poem like that.
I want to be remembered
for my words, my images,
my metaphors. Others are recalled
for their baggy baggy jeans
or their green hair
but now they are balding
or fat, and those things
are lost. A poem lasts forever,
it defies nature
and gravity
and inertia.
Fixed in time
like nothing else
can ever be.
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April 9th, 2008
01:10 pm - Hoping for blossoms
This one is for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) txladybug, because for her now is not one of those times that death is "nowhere near the background." Send her your thoughts, your prayers, your hope, because we all need that from other people sometimes. I can't even begin to imagine facing what she's facing, what her parents are facing, what her brother is facing. Twenty-somethings should not be diagnosed with brain tumors. That is just not right. I feel as adolescently rageful at G-d as I did when I was 15, and learned that a friend had been killed instantly driving back from the coast, after their car skid on some gravel by the side of the road.
From "Blossoms"
by Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
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April 3rd, 2008
03:07 pm - Poem
Kaddish
Thirteen days from now
will be the first yarzheit
of my father-in-law.
We will be heading up to Maine
a place he never made it
in his fifty-six short years
on this planet. There
we will scatter his ashes
from a boat,
a fitting place to pay tribute
to a man who knew how to love
the sea
more than he knew how to love
his daughters
his wife.
From there we will hop on a plane
to Miami
in order to rejoice
in my people's liberation
once again. My beloved
said to me:
"I feel safe with your family."
This April
marked by birthdays and
robins signaling that winter
may finally be over
all I can think about is
loss. Loss of something
that was never there
to begin with. It's a strange
kind of loss. Like looking
at someone else's photo album:
Happy smiling faces, memories that
feel familiar
but which are not mine.
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February 22nd, 2008
10:53 am - Yet another poem about winter
Winter Blues II
This snow will never end.
We will be buried under 6 to 9 inches,
not to mention piles of snow-covered cars
and garbage, and giant snow berms
blocking all our escape routes.
We will be buried by temperatures
that never reach above 40 degrees
and produce icicles in our hair
on mornings when we're late
getting out the door.
Two months ago
I bought paperwhite bulbs,
trying to force
spring to come sooner.
The bulbs have now bloomed,
and still they sit inside
not ready to be planted.
The ground too frozen to accept them.
A friend flees New England
for southern California
Our flight was canceled tonight
due to this endless monotony.
I have almost given up hope
that spring will ever come.
Almost.
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December 14th, 2007
12:03 pm - Imperfect
Just something I was playing around with in my head this morning on the way to work...
Things are never as pretty
as they first seem. There is
no such thing as
love at first sight.
This blanket of snow which silences
everything, makes the woods
look pristine and calm
is treacherous
the next morning
when you are trying to walk to work.
There's always someone
who won't shovel their driveway
or de-ice their sidewalk.
This morning it was Melvin
Pharmacy and 1642 Commonwealth Ave.
Last night I had to shovel out
our parking space before we could go home
The snow looked so pretty
from inside my warm office
and from our bed this morning.
Nothing is as pretty as it seems
Nothing ever works the way
the package says it should.
No relationship is as easy as
the first six months.
Nothing is ever perfect
but it's always real.
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December 10th, 2007
01:54 pm - Icy Monday morning (a haiku)
Cold pellets on face
Thick sheet obscures car window
Winter blues roll in.
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December 7th, 2007
10:45 am - Reaction to Omaha, NE shooting
This is when I feel useless.
What am I doing with my life, and
do I make a difference
if you can exist.
Skinny twenty year old boy
in Nebraska
Spent most of his life
threatening to kill his stepmother
and locked up in institutions
that tried to keep him safe.
Did they keep you safe?
Did you ever feel safe?
Did you ever feel loved?
Why wasn't it enough for you?
I think about other yous
I knew when they were twelve
in 1998. They're your age now.
Do they still harbor the same rage you do?
Or have they found love
or something else
equally sustaining -
music or art. Maybe
plumbing or linguistics.
Something to hold them.
Something to give them meaning.
Something - or someone -
to love
and be loved by.
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October 26th, 2007
09:06 am - Poem
Winter Blues
I am resisting winter
I am resisting
having to pile on
hat, scarf, gloves,
several layers of clothes
I am resisting
walking home from work
at five o'clock in the evening
in pitch blackness.
I am resisting winter
It is October
the Red Sox are in the World Series
and yet I wear
sandals or a t-shirt
and the wind numbs my toes
makes me shiver
no matter how loud and energetic
the music in my iPod or my pace
walking to work is.
I am resisting
but it is fighting back.
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March 29th, 2007
04:27 pm - A poem
Wrote this a few minutes ago. We've moved to a much more Jewish area, and I spent the morning running errands around our neighborhood.
Faith
I envy them
Their faith seems so clear,
their path seems pre-destined.
Uncomplicated.
I see them
walking to and from shul
wearing their black hats
black blazers
white shirts
and peiyot.
The women always looks so serene
even with four children in tow
and without access to the shul
and the Torah
where, for me,
the excitement is.
I understand the appeal
Jonah saw in their life
Yet it seems so far away,
so impossible.
I too went to Israel
and studied with the Orthodox,
heard the urgency to make aliyah.
Yet I walked away
knowing if I didn't,
it would reject me.
There can be no faith
without acceptance.
There can be no acceptance
without faith.
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January 21st, 2007
11:53 pm - A lifetime ago
Man it feels like
forever
since I sat in classes and deepened
my connection to Judaism
pondered what I would do
with my life
I had just graduated college,
I slept in the desert
hiked across the northern border
of the only place I've been
where I wasn't a minority
I lived in the moment
like i've never done since
I had no idea I would come back to
union struggles
clinical decisions
mortgage payments
a legal, same-sex marriage
much less
moving yet again
thousands of miles away
still
i wouldn't change a day
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December 4th, 2006
12:07 pm - Relationships
A friend tells me
I comment on how quickly things move
in her new relationship
every time she talks about it.
I tell her it is just a reflection
of my own ambivalence
about this thing we're in,
this thing we all seem to clamour after
like kids during recess
chase a four square ball.
It's so hopelessly romantic
to believe in marriage
and forever;
are we not setting ourselves up
for failure
each and every time?
"Until it stops being fun"
was my adage when we were first dating
but fun became six, seven, eight years,
and there have been times that
weren't so fun,
like trying to put together bookshelves
and pick out shower curtains
or just putting up with each other's moods.
yet we're still here.
I know we're just lucky
and I keep my fingers crossed.
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October 26th, 2006
01:28 pm - Expired
"That person has expired,"
the woman on the other end
of the phone line said
After twenty minutes of phone transfers
and explaining who I was looking for
to seven different people
There it was.
What I most didn't want to hear
What cannot ever
be argued with
or disputed
There it was.
Expired.
Like yogurt or beer
left in my fridge too long
Like a driver's license
or passport
that you don't have the time to renew.
Just like that
Expired.
No chance for renewal
anymore.
It all comes crashing
crushingly
horribly
to an end.
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October 18th, 2006
09:51 am - Mortality and poetry
I wrote this on the bus last night. Can I just say how much I hate the #66 bus sometimes? Two buses passed me by, while I stood, in the rain, frantically waving my hands. But we made it to Girls n Queers First anyway, where where we heard the phenomenal words and music of girlsnqueers, toniamato, Jme, Margaret Caruso, and Kit Yan.
Wounded
A woman on the bus
waits her turn to go home, too
while a younger man
methodically pushes buttons on his
cell phone. I don't notice
right away
that she is injured.
underneath her pants leg
discretely pushing her shoe out
ever so slightly
is a familiar looking
air cast, the kind in
the back of my closet
from when I sprained my ankle.
I wonder as I watch her
limp off the bus, favoring
her left leg
how many others
have wounds we never see?
Sprained ankles, slipped discs,
kidney failure, heartache,
grief.
The list is infinite,
unlike us.
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September 26th, 2006
11:04 am - Cancer sucks
Helpless
Facing death
like boxers in a ring,
you're bloody and bruised
from the last four rounds
but you're up again,
ready for more.
He is always there,
one step ahead of you,
ready to knock you out
for the final punch.
It's worse
when you're not in the ring
instead,
you're watching the endless rounds
from the stands
seeing someone you care about
become more and more battered
as his opponent
continues his streak
of being undefeated.
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September 11th, 2006
09:33 am - Five Years Ago
do you remember
how the radio played Moby's
"Why does my heart feel so sad"
and it just seemed to hit the spot
where it hurt the most,
like a salve, like Neosporin.
do you remember how you went to work
because work was 24 hours
and the patients
didn't have the option
of not coming in,
and how all the televisions were blaring
for the whole ten hours,
but you all made art anyway.
do you remember how the day started
with routinely checking your email
but then you noticed
the "news flash" blinking
on the top of Yahoo's web page.
do you remember remembering
that night in Israel
when you heard that Rabin had been shot
while watching Pulp Fiction
in Hebrew
and staying on a kibbutz
with a friend of a friend's family.
do you remember how surreal it all felt
no matter how many times
you watched it happen
on the television replays
do you remember
running away to Walden Pond
because the television and radio
and internet
all became too much
and you had to be around trees and beauty
and quiet, to remind yourself
it still existed.
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July 23rd, 2006
11:33 pm - Toni's All Nighter
toniamato hosted an all night writing workshop last night. His last writing workshop in his current home. After writing, snacking, laughing, napping, and writing some more, we walked to the park at sunrise, came home and wrote and ate pancakes. Then we came home, slept, read slept some more, and headed out to the Boston Common for a free performance of The Taming of the Shrew with other Reed alumni. It was a good production.
Sunrise in Raymond Park, Cambridge MA
In my in-between state -
half-awake and half-asleep
I am thinking and feeling many things
a combination of memory and
very alive-senses
happening all at once
It's a weird state to be in
On the one hand I'm focused on here
and now - even walking takes
conscious effort and precision.
I hold the banisters going downstairs
I notice as I walk freely
and stretch that my balance
is wobbly. It hasn't fully woken up
and yet the rest of my body
has. I am also recalling memories
of this park -
Five years ago, with Daybreak Day Camp
playing Blob Tag on the field
and regular tag on the play structure.
Further back, I remember sunrises in Israel;
that was how I saw much of the country
because in Israel it is too hot to hike
past noon. I watched the sun rise from
atop Masada, and in the Sinai ,
and in the Negev desert.
Here the sensations are different.
Instead of dry air and desert
there is squishy grass beneath my feet
and last night's rain
hanging from the trees. There are
birds, and they too are beginning to wake up.
They are talking to one another, chasing one another,
and fleeing their trees
when I walk by. I didn't intend
to scare them; perhaps this is why
I feel strangely protective
of the wriggling earthworm on the sidewalk.
Wanting to make sure he makes it across
safely, without being stepped on.
I am disturbing the morning,
so I try to become still and quiet.
Slowly, though, other things disturb this moment -
a taxi cab driver,
a fire truck, another car.
The sky wakes up, and I notice puddles in the field
I didn't see before, and
on the way back, flowers in yards
that didn't seem to exist
on the way out. Smells of plants
that hadn't awakened
still another sense
now linger in my nose.
This moment
couldn never last
but it gives birth to ones
that might not have ever come
had this moment
not preceded it.
Like ancient Jews before me
I say quietly to myself:
Shema Yisrael
Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai Echad.
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June 28th, 2006
08:52 am - The stars and stripes
"This is a setback, but it's not a final defeat," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "For protecting the Stars and Stripes, I will not give up and I will not surrender."
Hey Orrin Hatch
if it's the stars and stripes
you want to protect
start by protecting what they stood for
and correcting what they left out
when this land
now an empire
was first formed.
Thomas Jefferson was a flawed man
owned slaves and couldn't see
the value of giving women the same rights
as men. But I'm sure the man
who cut up the Bible
to make his own
holy book
would agree
that protecting citizens'
quest for safety, good health,
and yes, even marriage
is more important
than whether or not a piece of cloth
is burned
or held sacred.
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March 30th, 2006
01:33 pm - Ode to MCAS
We are producing a nation
that can either pass
a standardized test
or not. Gone are the days
when we sent our children
off to school
to come back with their minds broadened
and their curiousity piqued.
No. Today they are taught
how to pass, how to fit in
to the bubbles on a ScanTron.
And to hell with all the
freaks and queers
and poor people
who can't fit in, keep up,
or who just don't want to.
We are producing a nation of
idiots and someday
those idiots
will grow up and
make ill-informed decisions
about us.
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