For the Children, Never to be Mine
If you’re out there
Somewhere
I hope you know.
The answer to the question
Of why we never met
Is not “I did not love you.”
I did.
I just thought that you deserved a world
That I could never give.
If you’re out there
Somewhere
I hope you know.
The answer to the question
Of why we never met
Is not “I did not love you.”
I did.
I just thought that you deserved a world
That I could never give.
Was it all just for fun
when we laid underneath the stars
and you admitted how my taste
wouldn’t be the worst that your mouth has lingered on
and how that possibilty isn’t so far
and was it really as casual
as our previous talks
had simply stated before
when you spilled out your guts and heart
and threatened to appear
hands full, at my door
how could you claim such a longing
as something so simple
so casual
when your hands wrapped around my neck
with a hunger so present
when your eyes lit up
casually of course, at my presence
but of course
you are not a poet
and you are not a dreamer
and you could not even fathom
the word linger
so your brain could only comprehend
one way to clasify us
along with your brain,
you called us simple
but truly, in your heart,
do you believe we were just casual?
At the plummer’s office,
my house plans rolled out,
an elder, a Kupuna, tapping
an o’o stick, waiting for her daughter,
a yellow flowered lei hanging
to her waist, tiny fern tucked in hair,
She says, ground breaking was fast,
from planning to breaking, you know,
sometimes takes forever. So,
you building your own house?
Yes, I say, sons say they’re going to help,
We’ll see.
Yes, she says, her fern bobbing, her stick
tapping, her flowing dress, her leg,
thrown over her armrest,
We’ll see.
We both laugh, her daughter’s clacking
computer keys, she says my paperwork
is taken care of, and I tell her,
thanks for her patience, I feel relieved,
her mama says, from the chair,
she’s used to taking care of me,
that’s why.
We all laugh, and I think
I must be getting old er.
There was a time when I would have gone blind for you, but now,
I see you, still so far away. Still,
unmoved by what you have seen,
even though it makes me tremble, still,
after all of these months.
You come to me in breaths, in the oxygen that sustains me,
and I think you’re in the exhales, too. Still,
too herculean to be a real man, I think
you lift me up
after all of these months.
You texted me this morning, said that you
were excited to see me when I finally go back.
And I’m afraid to let you know that
I still am excited to see you
after all of these months.
You were swimming in pools of grace.
You want to believe you brought liquor to your face because you lost.
from the U.S. Holocaust Museum
I am in an orphanage
or maybe a no-man’s-land
where the living marry the dead
making families.
It is where I find
Gert Laske a German Jew
perhaps a communist
Standing in line
I pluck him
from a bin
by the nape of his identification card.
He looks back
from a blurry black and white
smiling
his hair tasseled like he just ran a race
which he did
breaking the tape
by staying alive
I carry his card
through the museum
He is with me through
the rise of Nazism
the Final Solution
the Cattle Car
Nuremberg
He sits silently with me
in the Hall of Remembrance
its eternal flame drawing fresh memories
to the hexagonal heaven
But this is where I also meet
Susan Strauss Taube
Bernard Rechnitz
Rifka Fass
their cards left on the floor
Others less lucky
suffocate in restroom trash cans
like a toy genocide
But I rescue these four
my paper family
bringing them home
I am a righteous the tourist
There is a special place in hell, sis
