Never tamed

Oh love

death is a transition

just as life is a bird

who interupted, will startle

leaving a smudge of indigo

against stark whitewashed sky

the shush-shush of neighors raking leaves

whose auburn crepe bows in protest

for they wish to lay still with the grass

turn seasons over in their golden hours

this artificial need

to tidy, put away, is but one method

of seizing a control far from reach

I fold in your arms, light gloaming through shutters

out of the corner of my eye I see marks on my skin

the furlough of time and suffering, chaffs against endurance

your eyes look oriental as you age

their downturn makes you smile even in pain

lends you a kindness strangers respond to

quiet is infused with our collected breathing

in this moment we live

sheltering from portent

I see the neighbor’s son helping his mother

he’s grown thin and reaching like the trees

not yet aware of diminishment

or why his mother holds back tears

when the sun paints day dark and shadows roam

casting their memories, as we did once with a torch and our hands

your shape lasts in my mind, a totem

I’ve carried an ache so deep in me for so long

it seems to exist independently

a Golem of my own creation

perhaps he will bend and lift me up, when next I fall

weighted by emptiness and disappointment

maybe he will spin me around in browning leaves

escapees of the neighbors rake

flung in unfettered defiance

a string of thoughts

stirred

never

ever

tamed

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immutabilité

In the afterlife

There is always something to do

pick up the leaning umbrella before it hits the window,  leaving

a tell tale smudge

clutter. Le désordre

le bruit, le fatras,

a maniac for the mind seeking calm

in Upton’s Jungle where only heat bakes

rocks inedible

cushions flattened by visitations, last nights vestige

reminds me of when the bad boy dropped me off at my house and I ran

whippet thin and full of bile through tall yellow grass before sun was up

thinking if I could get inside, wash every molecule off, it wouldn’t be real

for what is real? Who is alive and who is not?

Was it real that you gave birth to me? Or did I come out from your forehead

like Athena without guile, just seeking, the end of the puzzle

wet with embryonic writhe

a dot representing the center, a square we are lost in, a triangular shape of a woman

scything herself of humanity

yoga mat lying on the floor, when no one is looking, legions roam across

their sticky melange leaving detritus and DNA – filthy castings of a viral world

and we think there’s a purpose to cleaning? When our minds are so

filled with dirt, the stain of then, the need for order, no end in sight

you died before I could recall my own conscience

still playing in the sandbox with Pavlov’s dog

salivating at lunch time when the ice cream truck sounded

turning the corner into our 1970’s neighborhood

all the kids who grew up to be wrecked, all the kids with abuse

shuttered behind their sleep-filled-eyes, what we knew and did not know

before we lived, before we were fully conceptualized

clambering out of robot heads into uniforms with starched collars

and itchy labels. Derrida scolds me for forgetting

the metaphysics of presence, how the hair startles before

we are aware of the interloper.

My mother, without me would have been

the same, oppositions casting wide circles around the other

in extravagant orbit,

her elegance like a chill shadow

against ivory, casting divine repetitions

she may once have wondered what it would be like to

behold a daughter and then, cleaning the smudge

the umbrella made on the glass, moved on to watering

the thirsty plants, who never receive enough

sustaining in this infernal heat. Montaigne’s grotesques

filling empty space with coherence, as monsters dressed in provocation

attempt to mediate man’s presumption, for our limit is sifted clear of

lasting knowledge in the face of holy entreaty.

I am and I am not

here and there, once and before, dancing to the last song

of the evening in your arms, unable to

tear myself away from the grand illusion

that life could be smooth like a record with

little grooves created from their undulate

music to move the water inside our soul

carried far until we grow

weary somehow of the weight

and set it down beneath a tall tree

where we shall never move from.

(First published in Free Verse Revolution, 2020). 

The magic fairground

I scratch my head, the mixture of henna and indigo dyeing my

finger nails black

thinking of the red pill and the blue

Alice and her little vial

Drink Me

Pandora’s Box

Athena’s head exploding, a rebuttal to Zeus

yellowing wallpaper closing women’s mouths

Radcliffe shouts in her lesbian manifest

those following her down the well of loneliness

high waisted and limber of spine.

I want to nibble upon you morning, noon and night

but I do what is right and keep my fantasies in check

behind the lines of notepads and in the ink of pens

I suck till my tongue turns blue-black

your lips remind me of a pomegranate even without rouge

they look edible, lush, full like an excuse never to apologize

we are girls of violet, our pin in the concentration camps was

a pink V

last night I watched When Hitler Stole White Rabbit

at the Jewish Film Festival, chewed the inside of my mouth

in frustration at the abhorrence of others

when I was a child I did not have a pink rabbit

you left your hair brush and your rose water and your

tattered lace-edged simple night gown

I don’t think you ever wore one again, in the 1970s

nude was in vogue

women coming and going

from my father’s room

with dimpled bottoms and breasts like Claire Bretécher 

I learned my likings on photography books, under the section

‘erotica’ and other arts, believing archly

pornography an expression, when now, thinking back

they had such sorrowful eyes

like deer who stare into

the lights of an oncoming truck

is it bravery or hypnosis? Perhaps

it is fatalism, the French, myself

moving to countries who do not condone

indolence, expecting different results

when escape has no good set of keys

just jangles from your pocket like a taunt.

It’s not cute when you’re over thirty, to

long for the purple balloon in the supermarket

or lie, cat-like on the carpet and me-ow when your lover

is mad

it is not seemly, to be childish when you have

your first crows-feet, or need a push-up bra

unless you leave your glasses to the side

dive in, deep and thick

the molasses of not giving a fuck

where 80 year olds, excel and laugh

like they did at eight without front teeth

much the same, much the same.

The magic fairground, everyone remembers names,

I recall songs and colors of girls eyes

how they look sleeping, with their hands flung

like emotions above their heads, bent at the wrist

bangles on the floor, hidden beneath cascading sheets

elegance in angles, the way eyebrows furrow

in thought, how that line shapes over time into

a question mark, the parchment of skin, in

darkness, tracing braille, for the day none of us

will see, more than the outline of certainty.

You said: “Maybe you won’t love me when my

breasts sag, when I stop working out and the

lines of years begin to encroach. Don’t you like my

firm arms, they do not hang like bats, my mother’s did

I am mortally afraid of skin that hisses when you look

at it.”

Perhaps men had done this to you, torn down

your childhood gauze, made you feel the need to

apologize for things to come. I have read

Dreams Of Young Girls, I know how the photographer

can project a fantasy upon a real girl, even

when she is young, begin to pick her apart

as she unfurls like a Christmas amaryllis, not

caring the pickpockets of their distain

leave her in rags. Or maybe it was another

woman and her cruelty or her hatred? Tight

in an ill-fitting jar, straining to propagate.

“After all, you are so perfect,” you said,

smiling at my narrow hips (like a boy)

my unmarked skin (sun-screen)

the thickness of my hair (good shampoo)

how taut my calves look in leggings (optical illusion)

girls with girls tend to compare

it is not always favorable

though we find in our mixing bowl of humility

a little easement

the tasty wick of joy

burning low into auburn night

going over

those fears

with soft fingertips

and gentle reproaching …

Oh softening

Motioning

Nightfall

In whisper find blessed felicity

A body untouched, lain emptied of worth

brought to life, my Lazarus, spinning moon beneath our chins

rounding music fluting her velvet want to stay beautiful physically

for you to hold your breath as you touch, yes I understand

and still, beauty retains a deeper chord

dancing on raw feet to Erik Sate, trying to impress.

No, love, no, age is wine

spreading in the roof of your oval mouth

each place it has visited will transport you back, among the

grapes, tanned beneath reliable sun till just ripe, rolling in barrels

aged over centuries, buried with

secrets, the taste of fruit and toil, lustily on its wood

roots reaching deeply into history, for every year lived

another branch uncoils, the leaves, a brilliant green, bearing fruit

then flowers, finally sheltering, those beneath

such is a woman, such as you are

lying in my arms, the sweat of sleep, hot on your neck

cheeks pushed against my shoulder blades

causing you to look like you are pursing your lips

in effort to dream

finding ways always

to hold you closer,

closer

closer

closer.

Wait for obvious things

Was it me?

Crouching rubber hipped

The plane delayed by fifteen hours

Mother’s placating screaming kids

Dry eyed travelers, bent over wilted luggage

Back then I didn’t know 

Rubber can stiffen

I thought

I’d be in supline pose with windows open, aubergine clouds, seeing hope

In hot tarmac with planes, belly full, lifting off

Taking longing to new places 

Is it wrong to tell you?

Twenty years hence, as we fumble to claim waivering identity

That I was more sure then

Crouched, rubber hipped

Than ever since, watching planes taxi in

Spent and decorate with exotic scents

It doesn’t feel lonely if you watch how the world talks

Without humans

Hear the russle of late afternoon

A breeze from far flung continent, chiming in minds eye

Awareness of being, nourishment of movement

Peace wrapping around my shoulder

Just then, conscious

Of the infinite fragility and gratitude

To rise and take, moment to appreciate

Our small place, in this wide place

As alone we are, part of something

Far greater than our impatient wait

For obvious things