If souls walk among us.
He is walking
through ruins of his wounded
synagogue.
He is preaching
through unborn poems to a jury:
Giving life is justice.
He is quoting
Rashi, vintner-scholar, his teachings key
for corking this bitter wine.
Or….
He is outraged
by murders in his home and kneads
a needle through Haman’s arm.
I’ll never know.
I only know
his pulpit where I lifted a scroll to the sky
for worshippers to see
is dead to me,
gone (I hope) to where he is now,
rabbi and synagogue remarried.
As for he
who violated the holy space?
I ….
Remembering Dr. Herman Hailperin,
late rabbi of Tree of Life synagogue,
Pittsburgh, PA, and my uncle.
Remember how there’s just something about a fat crayon
that just doesn’t behave the way you wish it would?
Kindergarten shame blooms pink blotches across my face
still at almost 34 years old, because I’m using them now
to color my self-portrait, an array of off-brand colors
from which to choose; none so deliciously vibrant
as the shiny skinny Crayolas God used to color my friends.
And I’m still staring blankly into my mirror propped on the floor,
only seeing a heap of a person who cannot fit into her jeans anymore,
still unruly frizzy curls and the clock operating in another time zone,
frozen there in a muddy watercolor puddle of pink blue yellow,
wondering how every color of the rainbow
can be splashed across all the flags flying proudly this June,
but I still can’t hear that quiet voice in my head
that used to tell me what to draw.
It’s been a whole lot easier the last few years to just stop coloring
this self-portrait. The buzzing in my head at five years old
is now more of a chainsaw scream, and if I had crushes on boys
in kindergarten and sixth grade and my last year in college,
how dare I choose from the beautifully bold Crayola rainbow
to scribble myself down indelibly onto the page?
I’m still left with my fists full of skinny broken crayons,
wax of every color wedged harshly beneath my nails.
There’s something so tragically poetic that I dig so deep
each June, hitting a well of scalding tears each year
that now flood my page of verse and scribbles,
still not turning out the way I had ever imagined.
Are raindrops tears, with
messages inscribed on each
hurdling down to earth
Landing on flowers
Letting petals brace their fall
they listen and say
Your pain my beauty
I drink your peril, for in
Nature we are one
I rip ragweed from the ground,
dew drops from its leaves onto my arms
never making it to parched soil
nothing more then powder
across my feet in tilled earth.
I kneel in the garden saluting sun and
welcoming a new day as light moves
over hills and fields around me
bringing bees and butterflies and birds
beginning their day
I stand with the push of breeze
rustling trees nearby
to watch clouds, and it’s like
time slows for just a moment
there with my toes in dirt and
my head in the sky.
A year and a half ago
I’d been a barista for five years.
“Luck” fell into my lap
And now I’ve been apart of
The white collared community for almost a year.
It honestly feels fake.
It honest feels like a lie.
The only time
That I feel like my true self
That I feel like my comfortable self
Is when I’m five beers deep
And smoking a cigarette
All alone
And acknowledging
That a year and a half ago
I was happier in most ways.
I think poetry is mainly just
I saw aging hippies with gray ponytails,
well-padded grandmothers
with their pattern-bald husbands,
and a slew of sixty-something-year-old women
with bleach-blonde hair, high heels and push-up bras,
all wanting to relive their glory days by taking it easy,
pretending they are not now running on empty.
Joyous childhood
Lost
As the shadow
Throws punches
Slowly getting
Larger and closer
The constant battle
All-consuming
Stealing energy
And relationships
Leaving behind
A scarred battlefield
Momentary relief
Appreciated
Yet colored by
Fear that
It is temporary
Overshadowing the happiness
Wounding the brain
Longing for
Normality
Holding oneself apart
Unable to believe
One can truly relax
Destroying the psyche
