Disjointed
Aïe is French for ow.
Cooped and crooked, you ache up
somewhere in between.
I feel sick tonight
sweating under my duvet and staring at the ceiling
whilst hope sits maternally at my bedside
as if I were an ill child,
weeping into her hands.
We both thought this would be a fresh start,
now I’m both legs down
sitting at my bedroom window
As the sun sets through the glass of my terrarium.
But make no mistake, I’m much happier than I was last month.
I’ve got a fresh new healing journey,
twenty-five-hundred dollars saved for Europe,
Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness,
and a pretty face.
I’ll be just fine.
from Leviticus
What to do if God’s lets us learn the wrong lesson,
imagining Aaron of old and an old man, standing
on the sandy floor of his makeshift temple, blood
of his blood pooling on the ground, his brother
glorifying the greatness that struck him silent.
Moses seems senseless as I embrace Aaron, my
ancestor from across the ages, Aaron standing,
an old tree in Autumn, his vestments hanging as
dying leaves, their sap long gone, and the sun
giving way to a moonless night. He has no words;
his silence is what lives on pages, coursing blood
in a paper body, we read his silence years hence,
half-eaten bagels by the sides of our books, and
the crook of an old man at the far table, scoffing
at it all, branding his ancestors mafia, and God
is a Nazi, he says (if only in this case). We too are
silent at this death, learning not to burn but to
bend, but I yearn for the Welsh poet’s warning
not to go gently but to erupt into flames of rage
and light up the dying day, to close the books, to
rise, to leave and to learn on the streets if need be.
” I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the
