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.