Alternative Ending

You listen to the fading darkness beneath the floorboards,
measuring time in the patterns of the whore's footsteps
treading away from the royal chamber:

Do not expect gold when the sun rises.

The Calling

Before you were born, a sliver of breath in your mother's womb,
cut finer than the thinnest silver, that lines the shelves of kings
who have forgotten what it means to rule: I named you,
and in your name, I called the waves of the ocean,
the trees and the roots of the trees, even when they stand
uprooted, white peeking out from brown mud, indented by bare feet.

I called the songs of the Levites' harps,
and the cries of the beggars in the alleyway,
where the pilgrims buy their sacrificial sheep.

I called you: To rule, because they could not rule,
to be vanquished like a lover, by silence and chains.

Do not expect gold when the sun rises.



http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1101.htm

When I was 17, I had a crush on Jeremiah

So, after my free-writing rant about the dangers of free-writing...I decided to set up a free-writing project for myself for the month of Av. I want to read chapters of Yirmiyahu and write about them. This is appropriate because Yirmiyahu prophecied about the destruction of the temple, which took place in Av, and who actually was the main prophet during the destruction of the temple as well. I recently read a great book (in Hebrew) called "Yirmiyahu", by Rabbi Benny Lau. It's about....surprise! - Yirmiyahu.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1101.htm

Hardening of the Lungs

The moment held in your palm, like a glass bell
shattered by ceaseless soundwaves, like air
breathed in by lungs grown softer than your kisses,
seething with purple pus, the color of envy and hisbiscus
petals floating in the water, looking almost asleep
in their peaceful decay, and your eyes -
the color of rotten leaves beneath my palms.

Like a flower afraid of each sun's rising,
which brings her closer to the moment
her petals will droop from her stem,
like the eyes of a lazy lover,
I learned to wilt beneath the harshness
of your seasons: harsher than the fibers
contracting the spaces in between your alveoli,
adding adagios and allegros to your breaths' music,
which has become almost like jazz:

A type of music I never cared for.

I Am So Meta: On Writing

Today I read an article about free-writing for a class of mine. It said that free-writing can be a great tool to get the juices flowing, but can also cause writers to get stuck in a quagmire if they get addicted to freewriting at the expense of editing. I kind of feel like that's what happened to me with this blog: I've been freewriting to force myself to write, without proper editing. I've gotten lazy.

I also think that I've been having problems with words recently, because words can be - should be - an expression of our deepest selves, and I have not been taking time to connect with God - so how can I connect with my deepest self when that self is made in the image of God? Furthermore, words should be used as tools to serve God - and I have not been using my words enough to say kind things to people, to pray and to learn Torah. On Yom Kippur we say, "The widening of the hear is from man. but the gift of words is from God", and I truly beleive that. Each poem I write is a gift that God gave me.

Today I looked at someone who loves me and told them, "You are not worth words" - I meant of course, they were not worth the words of my trying to explain my behavior. But it came out wrong, and I think that that phrase "You are not worth words" is one of the meanest phrases one could ever say - and I also think it would make a great line in a story, and my brain plugs scenarios into that line, and none pleases me. I keep on thinking of that line by (I think it was) Stephen Dunn: "When mother died, I thought: Now I shall have a death-poem and that was unacceptable"*

But what is life if not the feild for an artists' scythe? Of course, Oscar Wilde said that it is not art that immitates life, but rather, life immitates art. Then there are those artists who try to craft their life like a peice of art. I consider Frida one of these: From her journal to her riboso and signature flower, she wanted each action, each word, each peice of costume - for her clothes were a costume - to reflect her essence as an artist. But I am afraid, because art can be broken; I have seen the emasculated naked men in Greek statues. But as Rilke would remind me in "Torso of Apollo", that broken art remains immutable, immortal in its ability to affect us even when the stone has been chiseled away.**

What strikes me most is the final couplet of the poem: "burst like a star: for here there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life." This strikes me because it is what I think about when I think about God: To confront God is to be forced to confront oneself - that is why there is exegesis that the "man" Jacob fights with that results in his being called "The one who wrestles with God", because "I faced God and my soul was saved", is actually Jacob wrestling with himself, and winning. This is also my take on Existentialism: For Sartre, one must be able to look oneself in the eye and be happy - to look at oneself through the eyes of another is hell, as he expressed in his play "No Exit". For the religious person, one must be able to look at oneself in the eye as reflected through the metaphoric eyes of God, and be happy.

I am not quite sure where this is leading; perhaps it is becoming a rant on all of Western culture. I do know however, that I pray to God to help me to use my words as tools to serve Him. Today we had to write six word memoirs in class, based on the famous Hemingway story: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.". My memoir was: "Glimmering: To grasp gold from shadows. ". I will leave you to ponder the meaning of those words.


* I am quoting from memory, so a word or two may be off, and punctuation may be off.
** http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19707

Leaving Town After The Battle, On My 20th Birthday

Her hand shimmered in the moonlight, a pearl tinged with jade reflections, fingers that were sharper than knifes, and on her pinky, a gold ring covered in slithering serpents of rubies. Her lips were slightly parted, but in the manner of one who no longer waits for her kisses, who no longer waits for any man. Her eyes were saphires, or maybe they simply reflected the pool in the garden, strewn with lillies, and it shocked me, to see the death of her hand immersed in the life of water; the flowers on her skin were like bouquets on a tomb-stone, she was so cold. Her hair had grown dry like straw, when once it had been the color of the sun's rays reflected off of sleeping trees. I held my lips to her tears that bled from her eyes like the crimson that seeps between a virgin's thighs. There were no words to say, and even the night had grown silent; the storm had chased all the birds from the garden, and the soldiers were busy raping in the brothels. My sword lay on my thigh, its hilt encrusted with emeralds and rubies that were brighter than her blood. I left her there, as the sun began to yawn out of the horizon, and the birds crept back into still-soaked branches, a monument to the life I had lost, before it had been begun.

Party

"We're engaged", she said. The moonlight reflected off the diamonds on her finger, as her hands formed circles down your back.

The champagne dribbled down the back of your dress like urine. I could taste the beef on your lips, mingled with drops of wine, redder than the blood you shed on sheets that were whiter than the marble statues we ogled in the dark.

"You always write about sex", you said, and I was afraid you would tell me that this is not where your hand touched my thigh, that this is not the angle where your lips met mine, and I smelled of cinnamon, the spice you could not stand: Your were always picking at your salad when I put cinnamon in the dressing. In the end, I could tell the number of our days by the way you chewed your lettuce. "Too dry", you said, but by then I had learned not to cry.

"Why are you fasting?" you asked. You were wearing a white sheath, but your hair was darker than onyx, dark like the shadows that dogged our bodies in the moonlight, and through a haze of champagne, I saw her fingers entwined in yours. "I have to pee", I said. You laughed. "That's not an answer." I was silent. "You've been drinking too much", you said. "What do you care? You have her now."

I tried to walk away, but after all the nights of dreaming of my dramatic exit, I stumbled. You did not laugh, and that meant you pitied me.

I had worn armor, in the form of silken blouses and skirts that moved with more whispers than a peacock's eyes, and perfumes whose value could feed ten homeless men dinner, but no cloth could withstand the bullets of being at the engagement party of the woman you once loved, and being forced to smile.

Decisions

"But how do you know it is the right choice?" she asked.
"When you are afraid", you replied, toying with the engagement ring on your finger. The coffee was growing cold by then, and I tried to fade into the broken wall, before you could spot my fading makeup, red lipstick that had turned to brown, giving me the grotesque look of a clown past her prime. She noticed it on her way out - but then, she always did have a knack for noticing precisely the things you wanted her to miss: the creased sleeve, the small tattoo around the ankle. "It's not so easy", you said, "we must be forgiving", but the anger boiled up inside of you; "Apres moi, le deluge", the king of France said, but I knew I would be out long before then, in a city where I had learned to roam the streets in silence.

I almost wish I had stayed. Now, sinking back into a life defined by fear, the worst versions of myself are reflected in broken mirrors. I used to think sometimes, that they were angels. But now I think I have been placed in a secret asylum, and I feel insanity knocking. What is a little water, a few raindrops sprinkling my head like blood on the altar, compared to this desert in which I dry up like a root, in which I turn into a raisin? I have beautiful, polka-dotted rainboots. I could have worn them to protect myself from you. I suppose I still would need a rain-coat, but no doubt you would provide me one, late at night, when you were sick of folding laundry, and I was too caffenated to care. "Be careful that you don't get wet", you'd say, and I would laugh. "It's not even raining outside." "You never know".

Yes, I never know: I never know when the rain will come, or when I will feel lonely while looking at a sculpture of a dead person, by a dead person, in a museum full of living bodies. I never know when I will think of you, and I don't know if you still think of me. But I do know that I am no longer afraid of getting splashed.

Saturday Night: Alternative Version

The milk trembled in her hand.

"You purchased organic milk?! Dammit! You NEVER purchase organic milk, NEVER!" His voice broke over her like rain.

He put his foot on the petal; she fumbled for her seatbelt. Her throat was hurting, suddenly, and she was tempted to ask for a swig of milk, to feel the moisture tickle her forked aveola.

She knew it was forked, because the doctor had explained how there was some connection between her tongue and the murmur in her heart.

"I don't know how to love, because I have a hole in my heart", is how she had explained it to her best friend on the playground. They had cried, and hugged beneath the slide. Years later, they would sit on her bedroom floor, and she would find herself aroused at the touch of his feet against her thigh.

"Have you ever seen organic milk in our house? EVER?" His voice was rotten, like curdled milk. The pain in her throat grew stronger.

"Out of curiosity - if I had a child, do you think I would expose them to a grandfather who would scream at them for buying organic milk?"

The car stopped. "We're here. So I'll see you later, right? I love you."

She did not answer as she slammed the door.

The milk had cost three-twenty-nine.

Saturday Night

The milk trembled in her hand.

"It was three twenty nine." she said.

"You purchased organic milk?! Dammit! You NEVER purchase organic milk, NEVER!" His voice broke over her like rain.

He put his foot on the petal; she fumbled for her seatbelt. Her throat was hurting, suddenly, and she was tempted to ask for a swig of milk, to feel the moisture tickle her forked aveola.

She knew it was forked, because the doctor had explained how there was some connection between her tongue and the murmur in her heart.

"I don't know how to love, because I have a hole in my heart", is how she had explained it to her best friend on the playground. They had cried, and hugged beneath the slide. Years later, they would sit on her bedroom floor, and she would find herself aroused at the touch of his feet against her thigh.

"Have you ever seen organic milk in our house? EVER?" His voice was rotten, like curdled milk. The pain in her throat grew stronger.

"Out of curiosity - if I had a child, do you think I would expose them to a grandfather who would scream at them for buying organic milk?"

The car stopped. "We're here. So I'll see you later, right? I love you."

She did not answer as she slammed the door.

Pondering Genesis 30 In Honor of a Homeless Man....: Part 2

"Why do you still love me?", I asked you once, and you called me a "silly girl", and smiled. But sometimes, at night, when I hold you against my breasts, I hope against hope that there is a reason you still till my soil, that like me, you are waiting for next growing season, for a crop of figs so delicious, the seeds will fill you with a joy beyond death, a taste of immortality to be chewed and digested.

"Success is up to God", you always told me, each shepherding season. The spotted ones sprouted children like flowers. If I am a small scrub-bush, then let me at least bear one small flower.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0130.htm

Pondering Genesis 30: In honor of a homeless man I saw in Brooklyn

"I am so angry", I said.

"What do you want me to do about it?" you asked.

"Nothing." I said.

You blew out the candle, and we lay together in the dark. I could feel the taste of your lips on my palms like a poultice for a wound that can not be healed.

Afterwards, we lay apart. I could hear you roll over; your back brushed my arm.

"If I don't have kids, I'll just die!" I said.

"Am I beneath God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?" you asked. I could feel the rush of air from your rising, sense the shadow of your naked body standing over me, poised like a lion.

"I am sorry", you said, and I could taste your tears on my lips when you held me until morning.

I remembered the day we first met, when you kissed me by the well, and I serenaded you with words and flowers. Our marriage is like the promising harvest blighted by locusts in fall, and I stand here, still waiting for the harvest. I would still crown your head with lilies, and dress your shoulders with my kisses, but you have already plucked your wheat from another field.