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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
