I need to go away sometimes

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I need to go away sometimes

not too far 

but just far enough

away

from you

and the others

the ones I love 

and the ones I don’t even like

sometimes you feel too close

so I need to go away

and where I am going

doesn't matter 

as long as it's not here

because here 

is a room

with a filing cabinet

where I put my papers

in drawers, my records,

the paid bills and receipts,

the certificates and policies,

proofs of purchase,

here my name is stamped

and sometimes what I don't want

is to see my name -

where I need to go

is somewhere

unmapped

where I can fold 

into the contoured landscape 

as formless colour

from a desert sun 

where I can heat  

radiant sand 

or melt snow

and isn't that what love is 

another word for returning home

like chlorophyll

making flowers flower

making ant food, snake food

eyelids opening like petals

seeing again

for the first time

longing no more 

for a place 

of your own

knowing 

you belong.

Light

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

A few measly times

then shoved in a dark drawer

never again to see the light of day 

most poems

will hardly be read 

but we write them anyway:

It's a heartening thought

that we do what we do

not for acknowledgement

or even by choice

but because we are driven 

by some inner impulse

that sings through our bodies 

with the same heart-pumping force 

as has always existed 

from the very beginning of time

the force 

that set it all in motion

and dispersed throughout the universe

in the energy of stars  

the force we express

in uttered syllables

"Let there be light"

which was the first poem

and is the meaning

of every poem

ever written

since.

A well-made bed

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Dirt in my hands

Cash in my pocket

Seeds in the sand

A plug in the socket.

Water in its banks

The runner in his race

The ship that once sank

Is still in its place.

The grief-stricken moon

That will never leave

The unforgotten tune 

The trick up my sleeve.

There's a place for me

Another for you

A place for somebody

A place for the Jew.

A question has a choice 

A thought has a head

The sound of my voice

Like a well-made bed.

A night ends and starts 

A day starts and ends

The whole has its parts

And we say Amen.

An idea that takes getting used to

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

An idea that takes getting used to:

Your firstborn daughter 

gets married.

She flashes the gold ring

and suddenly the tiny hand

you clutched so tightly at the park

as she slid down the slide

or swung on the swing

no longer looks familiar.

You stood by 

as she went from hardly making decisions 

to making most decisions,

some good, some bad,

some with more head than heart

and vice versa

and you always felt part 

of that back and forth

like a clock's pendulum

as her days ticked forward

there were decisions 

you scrutinized 

looking for signs of character

or lack of it, 

decisions you judged 

in your head, tongue held,

and others you couldn't hold back on

but not this one,

the only one that truly matters, 

with a gravity

that will make it stick

hopefully 

the choice of a lifelong partner. 

Now you're on the sidelines

a bystander

and it occurs to you 

for the first time 

she's always been her own person,

she never belonged to you,

all you ever really had

were memories, expectations 

and hopes;

One line follows the next

with an end rhyme

or without one,

there's a rhythm to it

a sense 

you're trying to catch

and you feel alone 

you don't get it 

like one

who learned in school

how to hate poetry.

A Change of Tires

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

CLICK HERE FOR THE MUSICAL VERSION 1

CLICK HERE FOR THE MUSICAL VERSION 2

Winter's coming and it's getting cold,

The rain's become sleet and I'm growing old,

Turn the temperature up, another log on the fire,

The season is here for a change of tires.

Fetch the snow shovel love, store the lawn mower,

Streets are getting slick, the driving's getting slower,

Watch every step, so your situation's not dire, 

The season is here for a change of tires.

Enjoy second helpings to pack on the pounds,

Celebrate with family and toast a few rounds,

Count all your blessings, it helps to inspire,

The season is here for a change of tires.

Put away those tees and take out your sweater,

I'll hug you a bit closer to survive this weather,   

Forgive me the times I proved to be a liar,

The season is here for a change of tires.

I've loved you so long, stopped counting the days,

We've been here for each other, in so many ways, 

Some things stay the same, like our yearning desire,

And the car we take to get there, on a change of tires. 

Little hitler

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Nature doesn't duplicate 

copy

repeat

recreate

it speaks in variation

difference

dissimilarity

modification

looking at the tree

the leaves

seem exactly the same

the squirrels playing

on the branch of the tree

seem exactly the same

every impulse

to see them 

as exactly the same

is your little hitler

peeking out 

from the shadow.

Hurrah

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Some people are born

with the wrong name

to the wrong parents

in the wrong home 

in the wrong town.

Some people say

the wrong things

to the wrong people

at the wrong times

for the wrong reasons.

Some people see 

the wrong things happen

to the wrong people

at the wrong time

for the wrong reasons.

Some people hear 

the wrong things about 

the wrong people 

at the wrong time

in the wrong places.

Some people believe

in the wrong God 

and the wrong prophet

in the wrong religion 

with the wrong books.

The words come to me

from somewhere

(I don't know where)

and I write them down

right or wrong.

I've made my deal

with my destiny 

sing my song

right or wrong

Hurrah.

A Bird

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You took the secret

to the grave

but what you took

is less important 

than what you left 

behind:

A caged bird

wings flapping wildly

to escape

into the air

a fearful angry bird

with fading plumage

standing on its sad tiny perch

in solitude 

like a question mark

waiting to be fed.

How did it feel

to tend it constantly?

What toll 

did it take on you,

what did you make 

of frightful chirps

at odd times

of day and night?

Did you buy

playthings 

to while away 

the hours, ropes

bells and rings?

I suppose you had 

your reasons

your secret 

has an afterlife.

Chappelle rises and Gallagher falls

Was Dave Chappelle's extended SNL opening monologue on November 12th anti-Semitic? Plenty of people and organizations thought so. At the risk of being called a self-hating Jew, I thought it was brilliant. 

I normally eschew controversy and reserve my blog for posting my poetry, which ensures that my readership stays as low as possible. But after a friend sent me a link to a thoughtful open letter to Dave Chappelle published online in Forward by the great-granddaughter of Sol Wurtzel, a Hollywood pioneer, I felt the need to respond in writing myself. 

I can certainly appreciate Sharon Rosen Leib's anxiety and concerns, and in fact, I share them. But it's utterly misguided to put Chappelle's masterful performance in the same category as Kanye's and Kyrie's off the cuff Tweets, as some have done, and actually insulting to Chappelle's courageous, well-crafted artform. As my brother succinctly put it in a message "Society has lost its sense of humour - context matters." Even worse, they completely miss the point.   

Admittedly, appreciating subtlety is not a strong point of general audiences, and that's unfortunate because all great art is made of subtlety, nuance etc. It’s why Chappelle is a great comedian, and why, watermelon-smashing Gallagher, who rose to temporary comedic fame in the 1970s and passed away this week, wasn’t a great comedian and won't likely be remembered. But when someone ‘goes into panic mode’ because a raw nerve has been hit from hearing a comedian, it sort of ignores all the subtlety and art of what he's doing. No, Chappelle didn’t ‘echo’ Kanye's conspiracy message. Kanye's craven sleep-deprived late-night Tweet carried the not-so-subtle subtext of violence against the Jews. The term "Defcon" is a military term, it actually refers to justified retaliation for aggression. That’s why it is so disturbing. And the fact that Rosen Leib feels the need to go into a history lesson on Jewish suffering to justify the presence of Jews in Hollywood is kind of ironic - she’s lecturing an American black man. As if he doesn’t understand the meaning of historical persecution. 

Again, I get her discomfort, and unfortunately that was Chappelle's whole point, to unsettle is the MO of all great comedy. Unfortunately, if you make fun of stereotypes and conspiracy-thinking tropes, you've got to refer to stereotypes and conspiracy-thinking tropes, and that's what Chappelle was doing when he said "I've been there, and there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood." It's a statement of fact, as Rosen Leib attests before launching into her history lesson about why that is. If making a statement of fact is so fraught, it's precisely because it draws attention to our ingrained biases and prejudices, which is Chappelle's objective. When he said, "A group of blacks is a gang, a group of Italians is a mafia, and a group of Jews... well, that's just a coincidence," he's making us laugh at our propensity for stereotypes. So we can be conspiracy-minded with certain groups and not with "The Jews"? And what does he mean by "The Jews" - the two words, he said, you cannot utter together (reminiscent of George Carlin's brilliant 'the seven words you can't say on TV'). Does Chappelle mean that it's okay to think that "The Blacks" and "The Italians" are criminals, so why not "The Jews"? Of course not, it's that all oversimplified prejudice is stupid, but also that thinking stupid thoughts and having dumb opinions is your right if you live in a democracy and not in Communist China or North Korea (where it's required by law). I know that's a subtle message lost on a lot of people, but it's also necessary if we are to live in a functioning democracy. We have to acknowledge that we all have prejudices, and the only way to combat them is to expose them (by laughing at them in the case of comedy.) This is why provocative thoughtful comedy is on the front lines of democracy. It takes the measure of free thought and speech by challenging its limits, which ultimately has the effect of strenghthening democracy. It's a weak democracy that cannot sustain the challenge of freedom and descends into political correctness and intolerance. Bottom line is this is why we need comedians like Dave Chappelle. To make us uncomfortable, to inspire debate, and to hopefully make us laugh in the most profound way possible.

PS

On "The Jews," which shortly after the monologue was apparently trending on Twitter as a hashtag, and not usually to offer compliments. Here I will connect with the main purpose of this blog, poetry. Not too long ago I was asked by an esteemed poet and senior literature professor friend to participate in a group reading of poetry he was organizing. I was flattered and promptly refused. I hadn't written any new poetry in many years at that time, and certainly didn't think that anything I had 'in stock' was worth a public airing. Well, he was persistent and after much arm-twisting I eventually gave in. He asked me to send him copies of the poems I proposed to read, I supposed to vet them for quality, which was understandable and appreciated. I perused my files and found 8 poems that were not too old and not too embarrassing I thought. Some time later he contacted me to approve the selection, except for one poem. He asked me to remove and substitute it with a new one. This poem was one of the more recent ones, and was actually my favourite of the lot. I even deigned to think it was pretty good, which is why I was so surprised that he objected to it. The poem is called "The Italian". When I asked him why he was rejecting it, he answered something to the effect of 'How would you like it if someone read a poem called 'The Jew'"? After some vigorous debate, I reluctantly relented to his request solely out of respect for him. But frankly, I was left feeling disgusted by how it seemed like decades of academia had cowed my professor-poet-friend, turned him into a politically-correct milquetoast, which is the death knell of creativity. What an indictment of academia I thought. And how sad for his art. We are all the poorer for it. Incidentally, there is nothing remotely offensive about the poem, except apparently the title, I guess.  

Jerusalem Snow

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

I was once in Jerusalem

in December 

when it snowed

like it was Montreal.

They don't have snow shovels

in Jerusalem only spades 

sharpened for burying the dead,

so the snow kept piling up

the cars and buses couldn't pass

we all came out from our houses

to witness what was happening

as if it was a miracle,

stood around listening 

to the unfamiliar silence

of the city that's never silent

except for one minute

on Yom Hazikaron.

The heavy wet snow

dressed the streets

in white like it was Yom Kippur;

the souks, synagogues, and mosques, 

the war memorials, Yad Vashem,

Mea Shearim, Silwan, the Temple Mount, 

Scopus and Sheikh Jarrah,

the Knesset, the bomb shelters 

and graves all covered

in an endless spotless garment

of white.

As if in unison

we all suddenly started to play 

in the snow

laughed like children

and the laughter echoed

through the narrow alleyways

in every quarter

like the call to prayer

for a new religion

and we were happy.

Snow

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Clarity;

I want 

clarity of language

not speaking in tongues

no jawing jawing

about God.

I want a job.

I want a job

that pays a living wage.

I want

to understand 

what I need to understand

to get along

without much effort

just enough.

I want poetry

poetry

that enters my soul

like the sweet scent

of cinnamon danish

warm from the oven.

I want to see

an autumn day's

slanting light

as it plays among

the dying leaves

like flashing flagship

semiphore

from a sinking ship.

I want a signal.

I want a ruler

that measures

what matters 

like distance we feel

from each other.

I want to listen

and hear

and here

and now.

I want time.

I want to know

and not to know

and to be ok

with the coming snow

I want the clarity of snow

it’s already getting cold

and I’m not ready.

Can you be a poet

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Can you be a poet

if you haven't 

published a poem?

Can you be a painter

if you haven't 

sold a painting?

Publisher says no!

Gallery owner says no!

But I have eyes

to see

and a mouth

to speak

and words

and images

in my head

and heart

a poem 

a painting

my body my blood

my beauty my being

I say yes

and yes

chorus of boos.

October

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For Arleen z"l

I remember

that mid-August day 

we climbed up from the road

and you said you liked this spot

because of the view,

the sun behind us

cast flickering veils of light

across the slopes of Mt. Royal, 

the green grass shimmered

like curtain velvet,

and the grey gravestones 

lit-up in uniform rows

like seats at a theatre -

you said this way

you'll come to visit 

once in a while,

and you were right

especially in October

when the trees are dancing

their burlesque,

a breezy yellow, orange, 

and red striptease 

(did you know already 

that you would be gone on the 18th?)

you loved stories

with a dramatic 

denouement,

and to laugh

before punch lines;

I still have the photos 

from that day showing you

posing on your just-bought plot,

looking too skinny,

like a fashion model

because they think 

the camera

adds ten pounds.

We joked around,

had no idea the weight

of the moment

when the shutter snapped.

I have regrets:

I wasn't attentive enough.

One always attends

to the place that hurts

the most, so these days

I come back often,

the view helps,

leave a rock.

It Means

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It means 

something 

but I'm not sure 

something else

something

our thoughts 

connect

I'm sitting on the couch

seeing you 

through the doorframe

on your computer

at the kitchen table

your concentrated face haloed

by the screen's soft electric light

and melamine

it means something

is it love

whatever that means

is it

a memory

a scene from a painting

by Vermeer

the layers

associations

the veneer

it means something

the world

is a room of clues

representations

for words for feelings

or incidental rhymes

of mind or

it just is

like two bodies 

orbiting 

and the moving tide

the sea

see

I get it

nothing lasts.

Dart

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

A game's geometric loveliness

becomes something greater

echoingly earth-shatteringly so,

orbitally small as the electron

and expansive as a planet's clockwork

movement round its thermo-nuclear star,

as new as science and as old and banal 

as bows and arrows, as paradoxical 

as Zeno's condensed notion of time

and as mythical and omnipresent 

as Orion's constellation or 

a tiny projectile pointed 

at a multi-petalled board

numbered one to twenty 

blossom-mounted on a wall

target for a neighbourhood pub pastime

of beer-swilling blokes 

backwards counting from 501

becoming metaphoric 

for out-of-this-world pursuits;

NASA aerospace engineers 

counting backwards 

from 10 to lift-off

and forwards to a future of planetary defense,

a remedy the dumb as dirt dinosaurs 

couldn't muster sixty-six million years ago, 

but we homosapiens, cleverest of the apes,

imagined and made true 

at a cost of billions: 

the Double Asteroid Redirection Test 

nudging Dimorphos the orbiting moonlet 

of asteroid Didymos seven million miles away

like a needle striking a spinning pinhead

from two meters thirty-seven 

blindfolded

bullseye

on screen

a telemetric soundless satellite crash 

heartwarming cheers and back slaps 

for a job well done,

knees up knees up ee-aye-ee-aye-oh

hope

for the inhabitants of one insignificant

floating mote in the Milky Way

one cliché disaster film sequel 

averted.

The Dead Do Rise

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Rosh HaShana 5783

The earth beneath and stars on high,

The gusting winds that grace the sky,

Migration of the butterfly,

Trees and flowers that beautify,

The depth of seas and deserts dry,

Attune the soul and sensitize;

Some spend their life asking why,

Why, why, why, why, why, why,

I tell them this they should abide,

Our place and purpose are sanctified,

We were not cast out from Paradise,

This is the first of many lies,

From texts that we internalize,

And the Judgment that they sermonize,

Another lie, another lie, 

But one truth can never be denied,     

And this you may memorialize,

Everything survives, everything's alive,

Survey the expanse of your insides,

The circuitry of heart and mind,

There’s no doubt you will find,

The dead do rise, the dead do rise.

Man of Steel

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It was like kryptonite

when they said

this is what you need 

to know to succeed:

Algebra and trigonometry, 

force equals mass times acceleration,

how to spell 'committee'

and conjugate past-imperfect,

Wolfe versus Montcalm,

and who won the war of 1812,

did everything they could

to press the crap 

into my half-formed brain.

But it was futile,

another disappointing report card

and I stopped caring

felt the strength drain from my body

my superpower leaving me

said goodbye to leaping tall buildings

bullets bouncing off my chest

and could feel my X-ray vision 

begin to dim

went from seeing through walls 

to hardly seeing anyone 

or anything at all,

these days I can't save a soul from trouble

if you paid me. The world's on fire

and here I sit

a man of steel

in my ice-cold

fortress of solitude

incapable of giving a damn.

All of the Above

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

You say I'm 

passiveaggressive 

and I say yeah

because I lovehate:

There's no such thing

as eitheror

everything's always 

all of the above

like the moon

in the sky

always there 

just brighter at midnight

the phenomenon 

is in every atom

the physicists call it

superposition

the cat is alivedead

and the best we can ever do 

is guesswork

gravity isn't a force 

it's warped spacetime

we've all felt it

life isn't like shifting gears

it's both

forwardreverse

blackwhite

goodbad

pastpresent

every virtue is also a vice

every sin a blessing

I am spiritflesh

I believedoubt in God

and when we make love 

I givetake

you takegive

the answer is

always

all of the above.

Come sit near me

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Come sit near me 

and speak your truth 

say what you believe

We'll drink our tea

and peel our fruit

until it's time to leave.

Truant

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September sharpness in the air

summer's end

hurricane season and

la rentrée scolaire

boxy yellow buses

red lights flashing

block traffic flow

kid faces pressed against glass

their paperbag lunches 

stinking of tunafish and egg salad;

the time of year

I feel the truant 

my thoughts turn rebellious

my body aches 

to break out

of life's schoolyard fence

soul fills with wanderlust

and the world is a whirlwind 

carrying particles of freedom

a scent that were I not feeling 

so penned-in 

like soon-to-be table meat

I would collect in myself

breathe in and sing out

delight in and run with 

call to anyone with ears

inclined to hear it: 

Damn your policy 

and forced education 

I live for truth!

Redacted

Can one ever truly

A poet's intention

Or are we forever fated

To exist in the dark

To argue over meanings

That may or may not exist

Or exist only for us 

Made up in our minds

All we have are guesses

Based on a set of facts

And vague suppositions

Assumptions and perceptions

Left to fill in the blanks of 

Life's redactions

What  is seen is less important

Than what we believe.

Friday

I F G T

I G T F

G T I F

F T I G

F G T I

T G I F

fin

Far From Kiev

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I show up

without appointment, 

"Take walk-ins?"

If you can wait 15 minutes

Anna will take you

a young man says

nodding over 

to a blonde woman

working the pink skull

of an elderly man.

I settle into hard vinyl

torn seat skin 

oozing cushion pus, 

and watch Anna

as she carefully separates 

stringy white wisps

with a comb

on the old man’s scalp

snips at strands

as if frightened to make

an irretrievable mistake.

She takes a step back

to inspect,

consider next moves,

snippets of conversation 

pierce our distance 

I try to place 

her familiar

immigrant accent.

She stares into the mirror,

her doppelgänger

pauses for ID,

then looks down 

at the man draped 

like a morgue corpse

face exposed

he isn`t talking;

she spins 

as if to confront 

an approaching stranger

(could she feel my rude 

inquisitive stare?)

switches scissors 

for a buzzing razor 

and with a click

begins a circle dance

hora of sadness 

round a chair 

bolted to the floor.

“I am from small town

near Kiev," she says,

"no one left.”

noone left

my ear is caught,

but you did Anna

you left

peripatetic

palindromic 

Anna

and before you

my grandmother left

from the czar's pogroms

to Putin's war

and here we are today

I am next in line 

waiting my turn

far from Kiev

and not so far.

Misha and the Wolves

It's a new Netflix documentary that I watched last night. The story of a Holocaust survivor (Misha) who survived the war as a 7 year old orphan in the forests of Belgium with a pack of wolves. Her story was made into a book that was published in the US and internationally in multiple languages. Oprah showed interest and Disney wanted the movie rights. But if the story of a 7 year old orphan living in the forest with wolves sounds incredible, it's because it is, as in not credible. My initial thought (like 10 minutes into the documentary) was, this story should not be difficult to verify, why isn't anyone doing that?

Plenty of people chose to believe Misha's story without questions, from friends and neighbours to animal rights activists, and they all had their reasons. Most were well meaning. The small US publisher who was responsible for convincing Misha to publish her story saw major dollar signs, but even she sent the manuscript to a Holocaust historian for verification, indicating that she had doubts, or at least wanted assurances. The Holocaust historian told her that the story had glaring holes and was most likely untrue. The publisher decided to release it as a memoir anyway, presumably greed getting the better of her. 

People all across Europe especially embraced the book with open arms, school kids made projects about it, and the author was welcomed at readings, conferences and on TV talk shows. The book was a bestseller, a French movie company bought the rights and made it into a feature film. I can understand the European enthusiasm for this feel-good story of courage and redemption. The Holocaust is largely a European tragedy and still an open sore, especially with regards to the perpetrators and their collaborators. Sugaring that bitter history with a little redemption helps it go down with the younger generations. 

The US publisher finally did decide to do a deep dive to verify the story, but only after losing a lawsuit that ruined her personally and financially, again, money being the main motivator (but this time it was about finding ways to avoid paying it rather than how to maximize making it). During the trial the defendant (the publisher) never thought to question the story's authenticity, she was complicit after all in publicizing it. The jury bought Misha's story hook line and sinker since it was never challenged at trial, which seems to be egregious legal malpractice to me, and awarded her a staggering multi-million dollar compensation.

The moral and emotional hazards inherently associated with questioning the credibility of Holocaust survivors and the veracity of their stories is raised in the Netflix documentary. We've all heard harrowing stories of unlikely survival during a time of unimagineable horror. In a way, the unimagineably horrific circumstances made seemingly impossible stories of survival more believable not less. And who are we to question what the survivors say they endured? Even more, as the generation of eye witnesses of the Holocaust passes on, listening to the story told by every remaining survivor becomes beyond important, it's an absolute moral obligation. This is especially true at a time when Holocaust denial and disinformation has exploded online.

It's this issue of what we believe and why we believe it, that ultimately makes the documentary interesting. Living in a time of 'fake news', 'alternative facts', 'post-truth' and conspiracy theories run amok, people choose to believe all kinds of absurd things that on their face defy credulity. Watching this movie resonated in my mind with the Alex Jones sentencing trial on the news these days. As you probably know Jones was found guilty of defamation for his outlandish claims that the Sandy Hook massacre of school children was fabricated. He was sued by the parents of the murdered children for $150 million. Jones defended himself by testifying that he never said anything on air that he didn't completely believe. (I can already hear Donald trump's lawyers arguing the same thing about the 2020 election ie. that he believed and still believes the election was stolen.) The judge answered Jones plainly: Mr. Jones just because you believe something does not make it true. That Jones and trump and their followers might think that believing something is a plausible courtroom defense (like Rudy Giuliani saying we have great theories just no evidence) is somehow indicative of a nadir of general cynicism and mistrust that we have sadly reached in society as a whole.  

Of course, Misha's story is not Alex Jones's (or trump's), but in some respects her falsehood is more terrible. Peddling lies for power and profit is as old as America itself - 'You can fool all the people some of the time... etc.' (Abraham Lincoln), and 'There's a sucker born every minute' (PT Barnum). But telling falsehoods about the Holocaust plays into the hands of the Holocaust deniers and doubters ie. if one 'survivor' is lying about it, maybe they're all lying. At a time when the meaning of truth and fidelity to fact is under constant and wide ranging attack, the insidious erosion of social morality is the ultimate cost. Telling the truth about our greatest tragedy, the Holocaust, is one important antidote to this disease.   

The Narcissist

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

I don't reflect on anything

that's not about me

the image in the mirror 

is all that I can see

the lonely snow-capped mountain

the anxious storm-tossed lake,

the calmly spoken thought

the slip-of-tongue mistake 

the determined bumblebee

the patient foxglove

the stories we've been told 

about the God above

the homeless on the street

the politician's rhetoric

the art in the museum

that appeals to my aesthetic

the news always breaking

about the wars being fought 

or terrorist attacks

that kill a lot

Instagram and Twitter

my Facebook page feed

and something else called TikTok

provide everything I need

I am what I take in

with a degree of empathy

if you call me a narcissist

I won't disagree

it’s always about me

always about me. 

My Question For God

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In an uncertain world

created to be that way

by which I mean with options

ie. the blessing and the curse -

because let's face it

every war ever fought

was a choice,

9/11 was a choice,

so was the Holocaust

so was the pandemic

so is climate change -

there is one thing

of which I am certain :

If you ever did appear

and I mean obviously

unequivocally 

unquestionably

undeniably

(I'm trying to imagine

what that might look like

in an age of smartphones

and virtual reality

a burning bush

wouldn't hack it)

some would probably accept 

it was really you, the Creator, 

the Almighty, the Ineffable,

but most would just shrug

and dismiss you and your followers

as another wacky internet 

Q-Anon-like cult,

but don't get me wrong

I have nothing personal

against god, it's just

the way things here 

have been set up

a lot of us are by now 

sort of addicted to freedom 

and honestly if you had to choose 

between a life of questions 

and having all the answers

between change and permanence

between determined defiance 

and robotic obedience

who in their right mind

would choose the latter?

The Requirement of Love

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This hazy mid-July

afternoon by the lake

I am sitting on my porch

watching a lone

orange and black monarch

dart back and forth

back and forth across the lawn

I can’t think of anything

in nature that looks

more futile and mad as

this butterfly’s flight

the frenzied zigzagging 

reaching altitude and 

dropping in an instant 

papery oversized wings

and spindly body batting

spasmodically

against unpredictable

currents circling 

in jagged flapping 

up and down patterns

a game of snakes and ladders

going nowhere;

After some frantic time

it finally comes to rest

on the broken branch

of a dead leafless 

ash tree wings slowly

inflating/deflating

like wasted heaving lungs.

The sun slips behind

distant blue-green mountains,

I am thinking 

of a conversation we had

one time when we

hiked those switchback 

ascending trails and you

leading with me behind 

said, we have no choice

we have to live

with it now, live

with what you said

with what I said 

there’s no going back

it’s the requirement of love

and just then 

the monarch lifted off

as if to provide 

royal assent

for our decision

to keep trying. 

Dolphin Dance

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Is it selfish of me

to love

the way I want 

to love

and not the way

you want me 

to love? 

I dance 

my dance

to the music

I hear in my head.

You dance 

your dance 

to the music 

you hear in your head.

I watch

the way you move

your body

in your way

the only way 

you know how

and feel desire

so I try

to dance along

looking to you

foolish as

a clown

while 

in my mind

I am riding

the waves

of your wake

up and down

smiling 

and beautiful 

my dolphin dance

for you.

Give It Away

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Do you really 

need to hold 

something back?

Keep in reserve

a little something

a chip or two

just to keep playing?

What if 

you could

give it all away

I mean all of it

throw your cards

on the table

show your hand

for everyone to see -

would it mean

the game was over? 

The few chips

you kept 

are sharp as shards

broken off

a still life

sculpture,

or smooth

as pocketed 

worry beads.

Comes a point

you say to yourself

who needs it?

Give it away

I say

every secret

every fear

every hatred

every dumb thought

every bad idea 

every prejudice

every joy

every love

give it all away

until nothing's left

there's a chance

you will fly.

Ants

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I flick them off a forearm

or a thigh, squish them

under heel or thumb

the black ones 

small and large alike

one time saw a critter

crawling across

white kitchen tile

vigorous and struggling

under the broken body weight

of his dried up comrade

and felt nearly awestruck

by his valiant efforts

to carry his brother

to safety

as I crushed them both

under my toes;

the traps in the corner

are insufficient

and the man fixing

my front porch shows me

how over years

the destructive devils

have chewed through

the thick joists 

supporting the deck

reduced them to sawdust

it’s an unwinnable war

he says smiling -

carpentry is his sideline

most days he plays 

double bass for the 

city philharmonic and 

on weekends 

directs a church choir

I don't know where

he finds time for woodwork

but he needs 

the extra cash

and it 'keeps me sane' he says

in steady measured tones

between buzzsaw screams

(he wears ear protection

goggles and gloves)

I holler at him 

aren't you worried

about severing a finger

it could happen

in a split second

of inattention 

the mind does tend to wander

life is filled with risks

he answers offhandedly

and I say to myself

he's right

he’s a good guy

I think

I'll let him live.

Father's Day

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We Jews don't celebrate it

because the Bible says

as number 5

on its top 10 list 

honour thy father...

so in theory every day 

should be father's day

but of course 

we fall short

so I'm all for a reminder

once a year 

and I have to admit

I enjoyed 

the special breakfast -

Pillsbury cinnamon rolls

hot from the oven

frosted with gooey icing

and fresh strawberries

cut into shapes and arranged 

on the plate to say

"We love you dad"

in sweet red

plus my daughters 

let me explain

to them the meaning 

of my favourite

Bruce Springsteen song

which they know well

because I blasted it

every morning for years

on the way to school

about the confusions of love

using a carnival metaphor

a house of mirrors

'showing us both in 5D'

and I asked them if

after all they've witnessed

in our home

they still believed in marriage

and to my astonishment

they said yes because 

when the ride was over

mother and I 

always laughed.

Father's Day Portrait by Tamar Black-Rotchin

 

Duck

It never really occurs to you

until it's unavoidable

that desks 

in an elementary school classroom

are lined up in rows

like ducks 

at a shooting gallery.

Pink Elephant

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She told me

she was dying

said it was so sad

no words no poem

could express

how it felt

and of course

my mind conjured

words because that’s 

what always happens

it's all I have

like when you say

try not to imagine

a pink elephant

and of course - 

and then she said

if I could I’d come back

as a cat

and I’d lie around 

all day and do nothing

because life is too hard

too sad

and cats don’t care

and as she spoke

my mind

was taken up 

by a pink elephant

and what they say 

about elephants

and writing a poem

no room there

for dying

or goodbye

or anything like

sadness. 

Mostly Alone

I can be

mostly alone

if I want

it’s up to me

that’s how I know

I have nothing

no, less than nothing

to complain about

we live 

in the most privileged

society in the most

privileged time 

humankind

has ever known

because we have

the choice

to be alone

if we want

and nothing is sadder

than feeling alone.

The Answer

I wanted one

believed there was one 

hoped there was one,

prayed for one, and

when it came,

it was not

what I hoped for

prayed for

believed

expected

and so

I kept praying

hoping

believing

expecting

and told myself

well, that's life

we hope

we pray 

we believe. 

my flowers

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what you see 

is what you see 

not what you see

what you read 

is what you read 

not what you read 

I am that I am 

that I am not

what you see

like me

like me

please

like me

please

for who I am 

for who I am not

for who 

I seem 

to be

to you

my garden grows

more beautiful 

than yours

 

my flowers

flower

and who are you

to know

who I am

who can know 

what is

if I matter

at all 

it's only because

someone once

said to me

as I say to you

the only words

you want 

to hear

you matter 

to me

for real.

Our Galaxy

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Einstein imagined it

and a hundred years later

an international team of astrophysicists 

and their instruments 

confirmed the data:

There's a black hole at the center 

of our galaxy

and now we have a photo

blurry as recollection

like a cast-iron skillet 

cooking pêches flambées.

But doesn't it just describe  

every argument we've ever had?

A mad orbit circling a force 

of gravity

no light escapes

a darkness so dark 

so vast and small

quotidian and strange

buried deep 

in a swirl of red hot stars.

 

I go to my empty corner

of the universe 

you go to yours 

in silence

measure our distance

after some time to cool

we reemerge -

once again approach 

the event horizon, 

teeter on the edge

every word 

calibrated carefully 

to hold us steady

for fear 

of falling 

into the abyss

because we know 

what's at the center 

an attraction so strong

and irresistible

a memory

so painful 

it will tear us 

apart.

The Same House

Love and loss

inhabit the same house

and there are ghosts

there are ghosts.

  

Houdini

 

When I was a  kid I was obsessed with Harry Houdini. I had been an amateur magician from a young age, spent all my birthday money on buying magic tricks and constantly nagged my parents to take me to the local magic shop. I'd pore over catalogues of tricks until the pages were ragged, circling my next purchase. I went to the magic conventions, even took a course in sleight of hand. Eventually I graduated to performing at children's birthday parties. But not being very comfortable on stage in front of people, I wasn't a very good entertainer. Even when I lost interest in performing magic, my interest in Houdini never waned. I read every book I could find about him, eventually realizing that there was something about my fascination with Houdini that went beyond his persona as a magician and entertainer. The infamous Montreal connection to Houdini made me feel a certain closeness to him, namely, that it was while performing here that he received the blows to the abdomen that ruptured his appendix which led to the peritonitis that killed him in Detroit. The punches were delivered by a McGill University student. But there was something else that I think drew me to him, although as a kid I was not aware of it at the time. Houdini was a Jew, born Erich Weisz. And it donned on me that the greatest escape artist of all time, the man whose career and worldwide fame were defined by death-defying stunts, whose family had fled persecution in Hungary to America in the late 19th century, was perhaps subconsciously and metaphorically manifesting his identity as a Jew. Houdini died a decade before the Holocaust, but I could not help imagining if a Nazi concentration camp, the gas chambers, or the crematoria ovens, could have held the master of escape.  And that was the inspiration for the following poem, and the accompanying pen and ink sketch, above. Yesterday I was listening to Kate Bush's hauntingly beautiful song Houdini from her album The Dreaming, and it brought me back to the mysteries of the man, and to my younger self.

HOUDINI 

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Outside my window

the maple tree daily yields

yellow leaves gasping

from gallows limbs, pendant cloth stars

stitched in the light

of the long ago dead.

Knotted roots clamber nightly

like arms through frozen, snow-laced 

soil straightjacketing the foundation of my house

and I dream myself Houdini, struggle, contort,

disjoint my supple Jewish frame in all directions:

He was the genius of the century.

Had he been alive to see Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek

would his lungs have breathed the Zyklon B

as if it were the purest Laurentian air?

Would the bullets of the Einsatzgruppen

have passed through him like a spirit?

Would he have metamorphosed from flesh

through the crematorium smokestack 

back to flesh again?

Would the doctors have experimented on him

with poisons and torturous instruments

to disclose the secrets 

of his death-defying talent?

In the morning I wake

knotted in twists of folded linen

like the vaudeville Jew whose artifice

could not save him from one lethal blow

administered like a student quota 

at McGill

underhandedly.

there are some words

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there are some words
once you read them
they mean so much
they must be committed to memory
and recited aloud
some songs that reach so deep
into your soul they must be sung
it's not that you need to possess them
but that they possess you
and so when I taste the apple
experience the sweet juice
and tart flesh on my tongue
expose the mahogany seed
nestled at the core
I think how clever
of the fruit to tempt me
with its lush colour
entice me with its sweet smell
perfect package
so that I or some other creature
may swallow the seeds
and through digestion
deposit them in freshly fertilized soil
to procreate into forests of fruit
and I think of the first time I saw you
in the lobby of the repertory theatre
after the show
you were holding another man's hand
but like a ripe fruit on the cusp
of unclasping from a branch
I could smell in the air
the unspoken inevitability
of our love
and wonder if you remember that day
the same way
I do.

More Sad

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The firing

of bullets and dropping of bombs 

is a familiar cruelty

on TV screens

these days

why do I feel more sad

for the businessman I see 

in his office? This man of habit, craven 

and long past the age of retirement

in his glassed-in corner, hunched over his desk

barely moving

like a pet turtle who couldn't outgrow his tank;

his days should be devoted 

to pastoral pleasures or culture,

playing golf or learning to abstract paint,

but there's nothing left to express,

no inner reserves from which to draw

inspiration, the only occasional rise he gets

is fist-pounding rage

when company sales are down, 

or the value of his portfolio plummets.

He's ditched the suit and tie, 

I'll give him that, can't stay home, 

can't stand his wife nor she him,

(on that they agree) so he

still comes to the office every day,

arrives at 7 and sits there until lunchtime,

reads emails, circles letters 

in the daily Wonder Word upwards 

downwards backwards forwards 

and fantasizes about fucking the Chinese interns

in accounting

younger than his granddaughters.

Despite the triple-bypass

he steals the occasional smoke, 

not 'Craven A' like before, Cohibas 

'he doesn't inhale', the big "C" 

always in the back of his mind

(so many he knew are now gone).

Along with a statin and a beta blocker, 

glucose is lately a concern

but controllable with diet,

so at the stroke of 12

like Cinderella fleeing the ballroom,

he's off to the local eatery

where all the businessmen go -

he'll show them his powers are not slipping

away, he hasn't lost a step,

still makes deals they can envy.

His car is washed weekly,

he over-tips his barber and manicurist,

the local rabbi comes for a donation

and he gives, (just enough each time 

to keep him coming back) he cares 

about what people say,

and for how much he leaves behind,

but not for the sadness of others

he's never had much use for sadness

(or happiness for that matter)

only anger and fear, emotions

that take you places.

At home in the evening

he watches the latest dispatches 

of the war on cable news, he's hooked 

on the TV fetish for violence and suffering,

the peddling of atrocity and injustice  

to the numb addicted audience,

he kicks his feet up on his Laz-E-Boy recliner

and sips Crown Royal on the rocks,

soothed to be safe from the world's general shittiness

and gently stoned he slowly drifts off to sleep.

Jewish Man Praying

Okay, so a black and white photo of a young Jewish man, siddur (prayer book) in hand, donning a kippah (skullcap) and the traditional talit (prayer shawl). Perhaps it was taken in a synagogue during afternoon or evening services? He looks intent on his prayers, a serene pensive moment. Nothing terribly unusual.

When I saw this photo posted on social media that was my reaction. Then I started reading. And I took a closer look. The face looked familiar.

The photo was posted on social media by Terry Foxman. This 'Portrait of a Jewish Man Praying' (as I began to think of it) was taken by her younger brother Robert. I knew Robert as my older brother Randy's friend when they worked together in the early 80s at the Seville Theatre, a repertory cinema near the Montreal Forum downtown. I worked at the Seville (thanks to my family connection) for a few years too. I remember Robert as a guy with wild ideas and a wicked, iconoclastic sense of humour. He was always coming up with hilarious stunts and pranks. This one shows Robert in his heyday. Randy remembers the day that Robert took the photo. It was for a school project. Robert staked out the Forum and waited for the Montreal Canadiens players to leave after a practice. It was not unusual for fans to ask the players for autographs and photos. This portrait is not in fact of a Jewish man, it's Montreal Canadiens hall-of-fame hockey icon, Guy Lafleur - the 'flower' as he was known for the grace and beauty of his skill on the ice passed away last week, at the age of 70. As the story goes, after the team practice, Robert somehow convinced Guy to go to the nearby Alexis Nihon Plaza and take the photo, but not a selfie with a fan, rather wearing the bar-mitzvah boy costume with all the traditional religious paraphernalia. 

This photo surprises on so many levels. One, imagine a professional athlete doing something like this today. Impossible. And not any athlete, but one of the greatest, an elite athlete who at the time was near the top of his game, a local icon - you have to understand how Montreal Canadien hockey players are worshipped. Second, imagine that the fan who wants to take your picture also wants you to go with him to a nearby mall to do it. Third, imagine that the fan wants you to wear some strange clothes to take this picture. It's simply nothing short of astounding that Lafleur went along with it. What a mensch. It was a different (much more innocent) moment in history for sure. Now think of the chutzpah the photographer must have had to try a stunt like this.

I saw the photo and had to make a double-take. Then I thought about its genius. One small piece of information, the identity of the figure, and the entire meaning of the photo changes. And isn't that always the way it is when you look at any photo or work of art. The more you know about the subject matter of the piece, the deeper the experience of what you're viewing. And in this case, what seems like a typical, even boring, traditional Jewish moment turns into a resonant cultural commentary. It suddenly depicts two disjunctive iconographies, the (gentile) Quebecois hockey player worshipped like a god in his popular culture, and the classic religious accoutrements of the historically marginalized and persecuted Jew. 

I talked about it with my brother this afternoon. He said the day Robert told him about the project, he was horrified. He felt it was below Lafleur's dignity and felt embarrassed for him. A stunt done at Lafleur's expense. Looking at it that way it hearkens to the history of Quebec, when many Quebecois were demeaned by their English overlords. But that might be a bit overly exaggerated. Robert was a prankster and maybe he and his buddies got a good laugh out of it at the time. It may have been just a lark, a school project that if they could pull off was sure to get an 'A'. But in retrospect, it has so much more resonance on multiple levels, that today the photo reaches the level of art.  

Losing It

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I may be losing it.

My marbles I mean.

How does one know 

if they're losing their marbles?

Will you tell me if something is off?

Because reality is if you're losing it 

you usually don't know yourself.

You need the ones around you who care

to tell you. They know you better,

in that respect, than you know yourself. 

They notice details, spot changes.

But some will decide it's best

not to say anything because they care. 

I need you to tell me because for me

a mind is like an aqualung

and we're divers in dark suffocating depths

in this buddy system, each of us equipped 

with our own way to breathe,

tanks strapped to our backs, masks on,

we send signals, I wave at you, you at me,  

it's the best we can do in this blue ether -

the craggy reefs and wrecks attract 

species of startling colours and forms, 

life like ours. I could be sinking, or rising, 

or I could be suspended in place,

it's hard to tell at any moment 

in this weightless world where up is down

and down is up, I need you as my anchor,

you know how I was before   

and who I am now.

Before And After

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for Sarah Venart

the ocean tide rises in suffering 

recedes in regret

 

a before and after

moment 

the bell rings

you are home

a package arrives

at your door

unexpected

the sender unknown

you open anyway

a faraway war

the former lives

of faceless bodies shot

dead in a neighbourhood street 

looking like yours

comes into vivid view

the message is received

no space is safe

from delivered bombs 

 

some bullets

have no exit wound.

Shakespeare's MacBeth, Act 5, Scene 5

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Spoken by MacBeth after learning that his wife has died. 

So few words and yet so many of them have made it into our literature and lexicon: 'all our yesterdays', 'Out, out brief candle', 'sound and fury signifying nothing'. On its face the meaning is apparent, that life is futile, we foolishly go about our days with expectations of tomorrow, as if every yesterday provides an assurance of the day to come, (yesterdays that light the way) seemingly unaware that the path we are on is to death, and it may come at an instant, like a gust blowing out a candle. We are 'walking shadows', idiots who perform, 'strut' and 'fret', as if there is meaning and importance to our lives, when in fact our time is short (an hour) and then we are gone ('heard no more'). 

But for me the magic of this passage is in the clockwork precision of the language, the particular choice of words that merge sound and sense drawing the listener's ear to burrow into our subconsciousness. The sound works on the reader without us being aware of it. For instance the repetition of words that suggest the passage of time; 'tomorrow', 'to day', 'yesterday' - time moving from future to present to past, but always reducing in unit from an undetermined length of 'tomorrows' to a myopic point, an 'hour', and finally in the end vanishing completely to 'nothing'. Even the sound of 'tomorrow' a word pregnant with expectation, open ended and trailing off with soft 'ow' syllables, yet containing within it the empty holes of 'o', signifying the 'nothing' seeds of our fate. Contrast 'tomorrow' to the 'petty pace' of 'day to day', the short hard 'p's and 'd's that imitate the concrete steps that we take to pass our days. Notice that 'tomorrow' 'petty pace' and 'day to day' are all three syllables, left-right-left, every syllabic step marking 'recorded time'. The 'o's of tomorrow, those seeds of emptiness return again in the words 'fools' and 'poor', and three syllables repeat in the phrases 'dusty death' 'brief candle' and 'poor player'. Only in 'walking shadow' do three syllables skip to four, and in 'shadow' the 'ow' sound returns our ear (and minds) to 'tomorrow', reinforcing the tension between the hard consonants of action words and the soft fade into the empty air of 'heard no more'. The 'tale told by an idiot' is a phrase shaped by rapid-fire alliterative 't's, like the p's of 'petty pace', but with the emptiness of 'o' inside them, as if to say life is the merger of purposefulness and nothingness, we 'fret' and 'strut' (the t's of 'petty' and 'idiot' making their appearance) and act as if life has purpose even when it possesses none. But the ultimate irony is that this passage itself embodies so much 'sound and fury' Shakespeare concludes signifies nothing, that the reader can justifiably decide actually signifies something deeply meaningful. And I'm quite certain that was his intention.  

   

The Collar Bomb

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I was forced to wear 

the collar bomb

welded steel 

manacle strapped 

around my neck

quadruple locked

the device

sits on my chest

timer ticking 

like a heartbeat

it's crazy-making 

that sound, the ticking

constant reminder

that it may explode

at any second  

tear a hole 

through my body.

I don't know how 

it got there 

but I know

there is no choice.

I have instructions

to find the keys

like a scavenger hunt

place to place

to find the next clue

and the next clue

to eventually find a key

so don't judge me

when you see me

wandering around 

looking for answers

confused

muttering to myself

like I'm cuckoo

maybe yelling at God

on the sidewalk, or in the park 

peeking under rocks 

or in the hollows of trees,

I'm not lost

I'm searching 

for a clue leading

to a clue leading

hopefully to a key

to unlock 

the collar bomb.

I do what I can

to hide it

under my shirt

the collar bomb

don't want to spook

folks in the grocery line

or at the convenience store

and especially not

at the bank where

they might get 

the wrong idea.

Not a day goes by

when I don't expect

to be surrounded 

in the street

by cops

sirens and red lights

blaring, guns drawn

yelling, "On your knees!"

"Hands in the air!"

and I will plead to them

it wasn't me

who put the bomb there

and I will do 

exactly as I'm told

no false moves

and like a monk

protesting a war

I will drop 

to the ground

and pray.

Guernica

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Life

is the track record 

of the entire universe, 

for instance,

for instance 

for instance,

take anything you can think of 

take Picasso's Guernica 

for instance, now

perform origami 

of the mind 

in reverse

unfold the angles

of that Cubist masterpiece

gesture by gesture 

line by line

lift the layers 

from the canvas

black and white 

until the image is clean

but don't stop there 

go back further

back to the store 

where the house paint 

and canvas were purchased 

and the horse hair brushes

and peel back 

another layer 

to the factory 

where the paints 

and brushes were made

and go back further still 

to the barn, 

to the birth of a horse

go back to an event

in a Basque city

in another time

back to war

air-raid sirens

bombs,

violence

atrocity and mayhem,

anguish and blood,

death 

and tears,

and to an artist

a man

to Picasso 

his youth  

his birth

his parents

his ancestry

his chemistry

his DNA

to molecules 

and atoms

and even to 

the very beginning 

of the universe 

contained

in all of us

it’s a wonder

anyone can sleep.

The Price of Oil

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Pump, pump, 

pump

rise

and fall

like a heartbeat

all you need

to know 

about blood 

and soil

in the price 

of oil.

Last week  

an army

invaded Ukraine

it went up,

this week  

ceasefire talks

it goes down.

Somewhere

in the desert

below sand

where nothing grows

barrels of crude

from deposits of life

millions of years

before the doomed 

dinosaurs, 

on the surface

the viper

and wind

shape dunes  

into wavy 

dollar signs.

Coffers fill

and coffins too

treasure chests 

and war chests

inhale

exhale

pump, pump, 

pump

an ECG

in the price

of oil.

Babi Yar II

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after Yevtushenko

A Jew, a comedian 

who played the President of Ukraine on TV 

was so popular 

he was elected the President of Ukraine 

in real life, 

and if that isn`t funny enough,

his country is now being bombed 

by Vladimir Putin's army.

As most people know

Jews make good comedians

because we know from suffering,

Jewish humour is salted with irony and sadness

and that`s why we laugh.

Putin doesn`t know from the laugh/cry

connection, no one`s ever actually seen him laugh, 

but from tears he knows a lot:  

He made them cry in Grozny, in Aleppo, in Abkhazia,

and now he wants them to cry

in Mariupol, Kharkiv and in Kiev too

where 33,000 Jews were gunned down

the first time around. Putin declared 

Save Russia from the Yid leader

and de-Nazify Ukraine!

his breath reeking of onions and vodka.

Okay that last part about vodka and onions

is made-up, like an excuse for war,  

but he actually said de-Nazify, no joke,

the comedian-Jew president Nazi.

They're saying Putin's gone loco

from isolation, 

been hiding in a dark room for more than a year - 

I was going to say like Anne Frank

but that wouldn't be right, 

at least she was with her family 

before the train to Auschwitz then to Bergen-Belsen.

This pandemic's been tough on all of us, 

but imagine the loneliness

if you had all those mansions and yachts 

and were too paranoid to invite friends, 

if you had friends.

These days he won't let anyone get

within 20 feet of him. I hear TV analysts,

they miss the Russian autocrat's more rational side, 

his more strategic days, 

when cold blooded cruelty made sense 

politically-speaking.

Who are They anyway? And what do They know?

And what was the point of bombing 

the Holocaust memorial in a Kiev suburb? 

And now it's gone. 

No monument stands over Babi Yar

for the second time.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone

I am afraid.

Ode to a Roof

How do I love thee, 

let me count the ways: 

Like you I'm shmatta-made,

both dad and grandad were in the bizness,

and so, you might say, 

is our beloved Montreal, 

woven together 

immigrant communities

who built an industry 

of cutters, sewers 

and salesmen and in turn,

was built by it.

But you,

you took it to a whole other level,

your Kevlar fabric 

was 'space-age' in '76,

the retractable design 

a marvel of modern engineering,

a roof that folds up

into the armpit of a tower hunched

over the stadium's bowl 

like a vomiting drunk after a bender.

A roof

that lifts away on massive cables 

to play Expos' games

under blue sky and sunshine,

and parachutes down for cover in rain, 

you held so much promise,

like the team that might have won it all

but like you

could never make it all the way

to the top.

We feel your pain, 

a slow suffering demise of 16,000 tears

(sad, but who's counting),

somehow you could not bear 

the weight of snow

3 cms in a city that averages over 200 

every winter 

(but who's counting);

as if from day one

you were designed to fail,

or belonged to another city

south of the border

where the snowbirds migrate,

or maybe an imagined metropolis

of a climate-changed future.

Florence's 586-year old Duomo

hasn't been fixed as often as you, 

or cost as much, 

and you're only 35

(but who's counting).

This morning I woke to radio news

that the 2017 plan 

to make you unretractable

at a cost of $250 million

(1/4 of a billion dollars, but who`s counting)

has been delayed (again)

with no end date in sight -

'unretractable' is a good word for you.

We're too invested 

to cut our losses now,

we're overly-attached,

our love is blind

beyond all reason, 

and will make us pay

over and over

until it's truly over.

Embarrassed

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for Seymour Mayne

"How do you spell 'embarrass'?" 

Dumb silence.

"Well?"

"How many b's?

How many r's?

How many s's?"

"You won't find it

written on the ceiling."

He was larger than life

this new teacher,

voice boomed 

prophetically -

it was 1957

grade 7.

His bright eyes

and wide challenging smile

looked like a diver 

poised above us 

hungry for the plunge.

"Well?"

"Why do you stare like cows

herded for slaughter?"

I turned to my classmate

one desk over -

shifted uncomfortably 

on squeaky wooden chair,

he nodded agreement -

we'd never heard 

an English teacher

speak this way 

never felt one

shame us 

by a mere question

a spell 

was cast,

stupefying us.

"A guess won't kill you."

"Who dares break

this icy silence!" 

a doubtful

belly-laugh.

We knew how small

we must have looked  

from his height,

his backward 

binocular vision

reducing us to mice.

"Must I release you 

from your pathetic trap 

of ignorance?"

The melody of his 

utterance

was magnificent.

"One b, two r's, two s's."

Hearing those letters

felt like he'd handed us

a key

the world

had cracked open

a door unlocked

the darkness

pierced 

by a sudden shaft 

of light.

Politics

She soars, 

spins, twists 

lands on two feet,

clutch execution 

multiplied by a high 

degree of difficulty

awards her the gold.

Fans cheer, 

national banners wave, 

anthem gets played

and a post-performance 

press conference

announces her momentary 

greatness -

sponsors falling

over themselves

to sign her up.

At the other end

of the Eurasian Steppe

Ukraine swings 

between war 

and not war

like a body at the end 

of a noose -

Russian tanks,

rocket launchers and 

150,000 troops

closing in

the world watching

hanging on

breathlessly.

Valentine's Day

For Daniel and Nadine

I know this place

for Chinese

zither music

just the right volume

the perfect menu

for us, Dim sum 

General Tao and

coconut peanut chicken

gluten-free

easy on the soya sauce

and no MSG

we skip dessert

run home

light a candle

and make love

no laws broken

no movie

required.

I do not belong

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I do not belong to this domain

Of flesh and chemistry

Of definition and boundary

I belong to what love contains:

To spirit and the holy Name

As one belongs to two

I belong to you

As heat belongs to flame.

Rhymes With Ass

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A poem for special folks like a VIP pass

Reserved for people of a certain class

Describing the fortunes that they amass

A poem like a mansion with walls of glass

And polished door handles made of brass.

A poem for others who are vulgar and crass

Written for a loser, a wiseacre jackass

Who leers at every girl with a shapely ass

And enumerates the sins he'd like to trespass

If she'd ever lose her moral compass.

A poem for a young idealistic lass

Who reads poetry while lying on grass

About the climate perils of greenhouse gas

And ponders how humanity created this morass

As she listens to tunes sung by Mama Cass.

A poem that's dark and sweet as molasses

And one that's cold and deep as a glacier crevasse

Difficult to traverse as a mountain pass

Or winds like a road blocked by an impasse

Without obvious strategies to bypass.

There's a poem for labourers to chant en masse

Another like news from the Russian Tass

A protest poem to enrage and harass

A poem with attitude, back-talk and sass

There's a poem for everyone, I'm glad you ask,

But this is not one, said, alas.

Tattoo

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for Annetta

Why isn't it enough for anyone

just to be desired?

The adopted child,

fought for, chosen,

brought home

to be loved,

never loses the feeling

that they were first 

unwanted,

it stays their whole life

in the flesh

indelibly,

like a Holocaust tattoo.

Isn't it enough to know

that your body still does it for me?

Sends chemistry coursing 

through my veins 

displacing my sense 

of space and time, 

invisible shockwaves

shaking me

awake.

As a post-script to one of our regular

misunderstandings,

I need to ask,

Isn't being desired all most people 

ever really want?

I can think of a hundred ways

they twist themselves in knots, 

risk anesthesia,

the surgeon's needle and scalpel

to be sculpted

to be stared at

like an objet d'art

(please don't touch).

You smile doubtfully,

scoff at crudeness

and immodesty, as if wanting 

to be desired were rude,

like an idiot who revs a flashy sports car 

for attention, a show-off

decked in baubles and luxury brands

so people will talk -

if you can't be the object of desire

at least own one

and maybe it'll rub off -

entire industries are built on it,

cultures too.

You're a recycler,

a lover of the well-worn, 

the previously bought, 

the lightly used,

the vintage, 

prowl the aisles for bargains

to resell, find new homes

for the unwanted,

your eye undeniable for

the gentle curve of depression glass,

rectangular Pyrex, 

etched serving plates

with the residue of family meals 

still on them, stains  

of the past baked 

into corners.

Desire is a starting point,

beneath every tattoo

a meaning.

Naming Names

for Rivka Augenfeld

It's a mouthful 

nominative determinism:

the optician name Glass,

the jeweler named Diamond,

the doctor named Payne,

the writer named Penn,

Fields the farmer, 

and you don't need to be a lexicographer 

to know what Carpenter, Cook and Banks do.

But rules don't always apply,

take Klein for example.

He was anything but small,

a giant, a master of words. 

When he wrote about himself

it was always about something bigger 

than himself,

his kin, his community, his country,

he grieved publicly 

for the whole damned broken world,

and then privately 

in silence.

Invoking the poet's significant influence 

on my insignificant life,

paying him homage - the least

I could do -

I misspoke, 

said his beloved daughter Sharon

had done herself in

at 27, 

joined that tragic club that includes

Jimi, Jim, Janis, Kurt and Amy,

but I was wrong about that,

it wasn't her decision,

or an accidental OD,

maybe I said that

for my own reasons,

a mystery.

And then there is

the Name of Names

the Creator,

the Almighty,

the Unpronounceable,

who I try to revive weekly

with my uttered blessings,

cup of red wine,

pale bread laid before me

covered

like a corpse.

If there is any certainty

it's that we don't always do 

what fate prescribes,

or see why

we should have faith

in what we can't name

but try we must,

again and again,

we must try.

Pandemy

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I give it to you

You give it to me

Want it or not

In this pandemy.

You don't know you have it

It's like that sometimes

You have and don't know it

It's hidden like rhyme.

Until others get it

And then you realize 

You were always infectious 

And then someone dies.

When she died, they said

A good mother, a good wife

A good sister, a good friend 

She led a good life.

Her goodness it spread

Like it was a virus

And now she is dead

But somehow inside us.  

She is gone, she is gone

One less link in the chain

Nothing but bones

And the pain, O the pain.

You have it too

For good or for ill

The symptoms will spread 

May restore or may kill.

I give it to you

You give it to me

Want it or not

In this pandemy.

Other People's Dogs

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Kasha, DJ, Amber,

Jayson, Gus, Tulip,

even a Rex,

I've known quite a few

but I'm not an owner.

A friend said, I see you

walking a large pure bred,

something elegant, regal

like a Borzoi.

Clearly he doesn't know me,

my impoverished

great-grandparents

who barely escaped Russian pogroms 

with their life

over a century ago.

As far as dogs go

I don't care for the trained

obedience,

the slobbering lick-my-hand

deference,

they don't love,

that's a fiction,

they're loyal

inasmuch as pack animals

can be,

they respect only 

the pecking order,

get shelter

and an easy meal

a lazy life of leisure

and in exchange

we project onto them 

our deepest 

psychological needs.

 

I prefer

other people's dogs,

cause

they're not mine, 

they're not

me. 

The Dog

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For David and DJ


I say 'come'

and you stay.

I say 'sit'

and you stand.

I say 'stay'

and you wander.

Forget about 'down'

or 'fetch'. 

You're a rascal

with your own ideas,

a nosy mischief-maker,

stubborn and meandering;

no lazy, fluff-ball

lap rug for a doddering

retiree, no arm-warming 

stud-collared accessory for a doting 

well-healed sugar momma,

you won't be toyed with,

or spoiled.

But even better

you're no ego-stroke either,

like those angular, muscular  

obedient breeds

that make their

emasculated owners

feel like 'masters' -

as if nature could be 

commanded or controlled 

like thought or desire,

as if.

You've got hunting DNA,

and remind me of me

when I was your age

(in human years),

a rebel, a lost cause, 

forever sniffing for clues,

pawing the dirt for remnants 

of the dead, scratching in corners

for signs of life behind walls, 

every neighbourhood

of this metropolis 

a tapestry of sensations,

every conjunction of streets

a possible direction.

 

In less bustling moments

there are times we are home,

when you do seem to listen, 

you stop suddenly 

and it strikes like sunshine through a window,

I see it come over you 

in your narrowing eyes,

the angle of your cocked ears,

and you become

the shadow at my feet

radiating warmth 

and fidelity,

and it brings me back 

to myself.