more poems

Some poems from the last half a year or so. read the tags to see what they’re all about

Replaced Screen

Pry it open
Snap it back
Call the East
To fix a crack

Appease our deep consumer lust
For false, convincing copyright
And reach us with the creeping shadow
Cast by Beijing’s city light

---

Passenger

Saw a number
On an arm
On a woman
On a bus
In a decade
Whose tired limb
Will remind
The rest of us?

---

Windows Media Player Time Machine

My dear Nicolas, my sweet Django,
Dress me up in shades of Gipsy.
I’ll be your Gitana, ruffles swirling,
Your lorn Third Reich jazz refugee.

---

Campaign

We are but a faint rebuttal
As the warlords tightly cuddle,
Hiding clocks with broken gears
To reminisce on fonder years.

Washing us with fruitless vision
Rife with paranoid derision,
Out of instinct, feathers rustle,
Adding to the furious bustle.

Captive spirit once departed,
Rigging games before they’ve started,
Feeble minds clung to division
Clear space for your next incision.

---

Be Mine, My Other

The slumber stalls
For waves of thoughts
Identities
Haves and have nots.

–Filter me through your sifter
–Bend me like a shape shifter

Twinkling lights and knit hats,
Posh tri-lingual welcome mats

---

Makers

Did Your skilled hands form us,
Give breath to the stale dust,
Weave tendon and sinew,
Or did we create You?

The holy one
Blessed be He
The only one
Blessed be We

---

Ode

But Thee I adore
In pureness of spirit
In loathing of doubt
I tremble, I cower
Before Thee,
O, Wonder

To Him that establishes the mountains,
Towering with naive faith.
To Him that compels the tides,
Crashing with baseless conviction.
To Him that commands the winds,
Erratic with blind contradiction.

And I, but a child
Ever longing for a Father
Shall know synaptic clefts
As cleaving to Thy breast

---

First Degree

Double slanted cross check
Thus the fool regresses,
Wanting the first letters switched
By the triple exes

---

Logic

A quiet thought quite
A comfort: not always fright
No, dear, not always spite
No, Lord, but
Mercy – dare – love carries
Meek me, meager me, even me.
My shallow, selfish soul grants
Pardon.
So, pardon me, but
How much more, dear,
How much more, must
Any just author of them
Both grant?

---

poems

no, i’m not back to blogging. that’s a terrible idea. recently i’ve been encouraged to post up some of my random bits of poetry…sometimes obnoxiously rhyming, sorry…anyway…here…a poem or 10

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In the Club

I seek a song spun from within
That hums with fragrance, wit, and time,
But formulas seep through my pen
Creating marks not fully mine.

---

The Blonde

Dreams brought to me a premonition,
A fearful sight to clear my vision:
Fate’s forecast harshly proclaimed
With traits too truthful to be feigned.

“Dear, you are lucky,” I was told,
“To know just what the future holds.”
But how dreadful this luck is;
What devastating blows it gives.

Then graciously I am compelled
To recall in whose hands I’m held.

---

A Song of Hope

There is a dysfunction that drives away reason
A demon inflamed
Corrupt, unashamed
By it we may disregard lessons learned
Transcend healthy fear
To dare persevere
Through long, painful pathways which lead to dead ends
We live and we cope
We cannot lose hope

---

Refuge

two stakes to bind
one to
one from
two stakes to tear

oh, cover me in crimson!
gush
flow
trickle
plateau
as an indigo mark of undying faith.
…but my world for just one scar.

a place of silenced struggle lies buried near the planes;
lies here.
i too desire to be a place.
my arms ache to be a refuge.

---

 

Fond of the substance or just the idea -
Like Niña, like Pinta, like Santa Maria?
Far from the homeland to conquer new shores,
She sails toward the East, but the West she explores.

How violently vibrant, compellingly lush
The sweet earth she hungered to make her domain.
In conquests intended to cradle, not crush
The land spat her weak armies out with disdain.

Poor conquistadora, explore other ground.
You’ll never be lord of the Eden you found.

---

Ode to Inventor of the Web Rotary Printing Press, William Bullock:

In Philli he installed his printing machine.
It fell on his toe. It led to gangrene.
He died when the doc botched a rough amputation.
A sad complication of Will’s installation.

---

Three Sixty Something

Two wants of mine create abrasion.
The first one shall not be acquired.
The second is annihilation
Of that which was first desired.

---

To Stay

What allure you possess, lovely among the continents:
Of losing myself in your dewy, green serenity
Of resting my defenses in your calm, grey neutrality
Of dusting off, like grains of Negev sand, Zion’s spiteful sun

---

Unrecognized

The pleasure of peach pixel pixie dust scattered.
Black smears on white linen laced with hopes shattered
Find me, contentment, in other shaped vessels
Than boiled blood of blind men and mandible nestles.

---

Popular but Rarely Discussed

Your scent insinuates sweet satisfaction.
But you are only sugar substitute
Convincing until swallowed
With a bleak, barren aftertaste.

I know.
I already knew.
I have always known that you are a cunning siren,
That your inviting murmur is elegant deceit.
But knowledge is a useless device in your presence,
Debilitated by the flood of your entrancing song.

Not in ignorance, but in weakness
I follow your melodic falsehoods.
Your lies of life beyond the shore
Leave me a corpse carried indifferently by a vacant sea.

---

On Paper

By virtue of birth, most men have one.
Across this walled line, most men have none.
Ever entangled in cleansing and war,
One for each instance, they grant me two more.

What is your meaning, you colorful three,
You branding reflection of my history:
For rights,
For rights denied,
For denying rights to others.

A trio of booklets to open vast gates,
Have you atonement power for hate?
Hope seeds itself in your bright potential
Which likelihood states is inconsequential.

Yeah

This place. This place. I’m always in one. I pray to be one.

instead

i could have significant and meaningful things to say, but instead i’ll just share the observation that summer is upon us. but contrary to tradition, i won’t start whining about my vast and multifaceted disdain for the climate this time of year – i’ll be positive and list a few things i love about summer:

1. mango season

2. fig season

3. tomato season

4. cherry season

5. nectarine season

6. sundresses and sandals

7. warm breezy nights

8. cold, refreshing beer

9. parties on balconies

10. people not laughing at me for wearing bright yellow

huzzah!

fresh pine

for what use is this bombardment of my psyche, this robbery of my sound mind? how does it benefit this species’ survival? this rewind, this edit, this futile imaginary replay. hope, i scowl at you. i give you the dirtiest stare i can muster. you are useless, you dreamer, and you cause only trouble. you waste the fibers of my being through which you are so tightly woven. you are an imbecile that knows nothing of statistics, and i would put a swift end to your pathetic existence if i could only detach it from mine.

about that

he never stops pursuing us, no matter how far we stray. sometimes he lures us back to him with a carrot. sometimes he then rips that carrot out of our mouths and uses it to beat some sense into us.

you’ll most likely not, but you just may.

to put forth all effort into trying to cause something to happen accidentally is a game.  and games are supposed to be logical, but is there anything that less fits such a term than to recognize a certain pattern, to realize a certain probability, then to ignore them both?   there is a dysfunction that drives away reason; hope is its name.  it helps us forget the lessons we have learned, and enables us to persevere through paths that are almost always dead-ends.

wall collage

i don’t know why i have the urge to snap pics with my iphone in grocery stores.  stop judging me.

what is wrong with this picture?  whoever guesses it gets 1 point.  1000 points gets you a hug from me.

On the other hand, establishing a location where i can be completely surrounded on one side by a wall composed entirely of chocolate and on the other side by a wall composed entirely of wine makes up for the previous flaw.

alsoooo i finally decorated my living room!  wall collage time!  here, i believe that the wall decor as a whole is greater than the sum of the parts, which are: records for a shekel each, knick knacks from here and there, google-image stolen black and white pics of the IDF and Kaveret back in the day, israeli posters from the 60′s, one especially zionist propogandawesome plate, a book, and my grandma’s ukulele courtesy of my sister, adina.

thanks, adina.

thadina.

i’ll post more pics of the room later…whenever i can use someone’s camera instead of my phone…

turn left

so i’m out with my native israeli room-mate and 3 friends…earlier we had a bit of a political/theological argument…

me to friend: take the bus with us, your stop is on the way to our house

friend: you guys live together?

my room-mate: yep

friend: oh how wonderful! that’s great that a jew and an arab are living together in harmony!

har har har….

golly…didn’t think i was *that* left winged…

but seriously… after things like this recent nation-wide survey , i have to think to myself, what are they putting in the cornflakes here?

so 45% of jews would feel uncomfortable having arabs as neighbors and 50% of arabs would feel uncomfortable having jews as neighbors.  really?  way to be racist.  are we really that primitive?  that fearful?  then again, if it was based solely on music choice, i would feel uncomfortable having both arabs or middle eastern origin jews as neighbors.  also both of those groups use way too much hair gel, and it would probably clog the pipes in the neighborhood.

chappy chanukah!

yay! it’s chanukah!

chanukah is probably the holiday that i feel most deeply, and most of those feelings are both warm and fuzzy.  they are so warm and so fuzzy that, in fact, if i ever have a soft, furry rabbit as a pet, i will name him chanukah.   he would, of course, be white, like the color that would be found on the streets right now if israel wasn’t so anti-snow.  stupid bureaucracy.

unlike most other holidays, i don’t generally connect to chanukah in what i would call a “spiritual” way, but its traditions sincerely move me as my actions link this living, breathing body to the blood of my past.  while singing maoz tsur, no thoughts of maccabees slaying greek temple-defamers enter my mind, only images of  a young spanish jewess in the 1600s secretly kindling candles from a ghetto, or a little russian-jewish immigrant girl on the lower east side in the 1910′s lighting her menorah from a tenament window,  or a 10 year old ronit kory in the DC suburbs, blue lights sparkling from the snow-kissed bushes in front of our townhouse and glittered styrafoam dredeils and stars hanging from the ceiling by gold beads.  although i have doubts about the supposed miracle of chanukah, i do not say the words “blessed are you….that performed miracles for our fathers in those days” in vain, because there is one miracle that i cannot deny:   god has, in an almost wastefully extravagant mercy, preserved my people across the ages.  (thanks for that, by the way, i like existing.)

i only wish that the jewish people now stood for the justice that we had for so long not been granted, but that’s another blog post for another time…

meanwhile, chanukah via youtube…

this is one of my top 10 favorite songs in the world, but i couldn’t find a good rendition of it without the beatbox…so…have a rappy chanukah (har har har)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-ZgyIJh00&feature=&p=3D18A3CFA677612B&index=0&playnext=1

and, now, for the cutest thing ever (check out the girl at 36 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gMTvGmpVbI&playnext=1&list=PL5C0E285AA459CDF4&index=8