Moment #7
slumber funeral
death of sleep as we know it
rocking back and forth
When I listen to Don Broco
somehow I remember you there,
standing shirtless in the crowd,
black straps underneath your blonde
hair, your solidity before me, backlit
by the opening band. But you weren’t
there. We didn’t meet until a few weeks
later. In the days in between I layered on
black lipstick and drove down the back roads
of Lexington to the arboretum to take
polaroids with Meghan and Elliot.
We threw our hair up to make it look
windswept, a lie; the air was sticky then,
but we cut through it like it was silk,
the car windows down, blasting T shirt song
from the aux. You never made it that far
with us. And yet, somehow, I think a little
bit of you will always haunt me. We were young
and as in love as two nineteen year olds
could be. The whole story reeks of cliche
and yet I continue to tell it. The days after,
I sat in the passenger seat of my fathers car
as he drove me up to campus, my earbuds in,
as if I could drown out all the buzzing
with these nihilism songs, and for a while
I did, cementing your sound track into
the depths of my forgotten aesthetic.
But no: you weren’t there. You wore the
t shirt we bought at the concert
until you didn’t. You never listened
to the playlist. Shit, we met when
I wasn’t even a teenager anymore.
But I put on the same
songs and somehow your shape
appears in the foreground, gravel in
the grooves of your boots, towering
over this new version of me who
no longer cares if the poetry is any good.
It is June in Lexington,
Droplets forming there
on the new-cleaned windowpane
remain unnoticed
as I sleep in my warm bed
while the night’s storm rages on
Night at the Pharmacy
She missed the Shoah,
napping in her
19th century crib.
Then a Shoah
came to her home,
toppling tombstones
condoms left in the grass.
Children shaken awake
cry for their mothers,
not knowing that
they too were dead,
and no rabbi to drip honey
on their tongues, teaching
the sweetness of words,
since no words were said.
The hate-fueled hurricane
grounded their granite,
razing their Yiddish.
But her tiny headstone
by the fence survived,
untouched by violence
like some child hidden
in a righteous gentile’s
attic, missing another Shoah.
*Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust
you just scrollin through
waste of your time
it’s right in front your face
don’t look away
from the genocide
can’t vote to choose
not to bomb kids in Palestine
just vote on hues
same old news
just fall in line
line dem strangers up for slaughter
in other’s pain i’m caught up
too sick for a doctor
prove it to the imposter
syndrome
shocker to your chakras
block it out like Thunder Ibaka
against the Rockets
good energy come back tenfold
eight ball corner pocket of your nostril
chalk up the cue from my kinfolk
walk up to a new view out the window
new shoes and some endo
voodoo doll my sins hold
with pins like they finna roll
off some skin we be trippin though
missin the point of what we livin fo’
gotta fight the racist system
gotta sit and listen
to a voice that’s different
what kinda example
we been givin to the children?
like thanksgivin
everybody in the kitchen
all this shit bout cooked
thought it was bout givin
more than what you took
leavin it better
than when you first looked
Would it be so bad if everything stopped working, just one day a week?
We would, of course, be a part of that moratorium,
but it would be a planned stoppage,
not like the stranglehold when life startles us.
The world would be forced to do things that did not require people
other than those we carried with us,
and we would make do with where our feet would take us
and where our hungers led us.
On occasions where we might do this for several days,
we could take an old-fashioned walking holiday,
wandering and bumbling into whatever is along the path,
removing the abscess of waiting that inflates much of our lives
in favor of the adventure that hides behind every hedge.
Every cup of tea would become a jewel
in the crowns of our lives lived not free of strain
but free of the other sorties we mount
in response to not seeing our own country.
