Marginalized Poem

For Edo

Marginalized Poem

This is a marginalized poem.

It’s marginalized ‘cause it’s stuck between two margins, you see,

The left and right of my computer screen.

I have no use now for the up and down,

I’m a poet

A fucking man of letters

Who idolizes Jon Stewart

And scorns Glenn Beck every chance I get.

No the up and down only gets a frown

From my face

No place-

That is…

Unless of course…

You desperately cling to the words I type,

Just wait

Oh, I know you’ll like

The way they’ll bite,

Got you all boxed into

The margins of your Blackberry Torch’s illuminated screen

I won’t say no

To a little personal congratulation for the Pulitzer I never got.

Let me pulverize your mind into that little box,

Or several little boxes

If you want to take me home

To share with your friends,

That is…

I won’t say no

To several little boxes containing what’s left

Of my measly worn words,

Oh the dirty, dirty, words, words,

Words, always coming from the left

Liberal words flowing freely, softly, hotly,

But softly, simply, darling, oh so softly,

Don’t arouse the might of the words on the right

They write with the might of what’s been repeated before

Long before the left decides what’s in store.

For first the rhyme chimes up in my mind

And what’s left is the left

I seldom know where to begin what’s left of the left

When the rhyme is so easy

It pleases me to write with the right in mind.

And your face of course.

Don’t think I forgot about you, love.

This poem isn’t political.

It’s a typical plea for the glee I see

In the atypical symmetry of your slender hipbones.

Stoned, while I while the while

Meditating on the image of your smile

The night your mind was

Centered directly between

My left and right legs.

a poem
is a gift;
its heartbeat
beats from
across a crowded
bus station
in Jaffa
it's in the
diesel engine
of a taxi
sputtering to a
halt by the
side of the
road very close
to my home
in Bavli
and it sits
and it waits
for the pen
and for me
to sit down
to decide
when it's ripe
to give away

Tel Aviv

I think of Tel Aviv
As two cities
Or three
Or four
Or five
And sometimes six
So when Ayelet asks
Whether it is bigger than San Francisco
The question simply does not
Register

This city has walls
Is walled
Walled in
In such a way that
Some of its very own
No longer carry keys that match
The locks

And somehow
My pockets
Always seem so full of
Keys and change
When I'm in
This city

The Highwaymen

After the storm freeways were littered with severed car parts - a mirror, a door, a windshield - all different colors, a red bumper smashed up on the shoulder off Oso Parkway. I lowered my eyes in respect for the dead vehicles and out of decency for the strewn and exposed parts that found themselves suddenly naked in public.

We were all voyeurs on the highway last night; we were families in khaki gawking at exotic animals. I've hydroplaned more than a handful of times in my life but after seconds the car jolts back to the drag of gravity. I can imagine those 8, 9 seconds, completely weightless over water; a pressing silence except for rain on the windshield and the sticky sound of leather pulling from your skin as you shift weight.

Poem for Trains (and Yona Wallach)

You come to me

In a dream

Or on a train;

On a train I

Want to fuck

Everybody I see:

The woman who walks the aisles

Checking tickets

I undress her with my mouth

As we move toward the last car

And we fuck in the bathroom

Over layers of urine and toilet paper that

Just can’t seem to get quite enough of one another

We fuck in my head

And in my mouth

And in my ears until each sense

Cums in unison, on a train

And on the fourth stop

You stop and clean up

And wipe your mouth

And wipe mine

And hold my hand

And I know that

It was the best thing

That’s ever happened to us

The best fuck we’ve ever had

Because we went slow

And then you curl your fingers into mine

And slide them through the place where my belt

Used to be

And smile

We smile widely

And thankfully

And before you walk out

You ask for my ticket

Ramat Aviv

Undressing
To a full-body mirror
Is torture
To a body not at ease with itself;
Is torture
To a body all by itself;
Is torture
To my body
_____________________________

Lior says you need one
And the one
In his uncle’s building
In Tel Aviv
Takes up more than
An entire body;
Takes up an entire wall
So that when you walk by it
You see the things
You necessarily
Give a fuck about
And forget about
The things you don’t

The Turkish Pizzeria

For Pancho Morris, Matthew Soson and the men and women of Frankfurt's Red Light District



The Turkish Pizzeria



So I’m sitting here in the Italian Pizza Parlor of Frankurt’s Red Light

District with its Turkish proprietor Franco, when at 3am in the night,

Time stops, and who might walk in but Hanz and Fritz

Carraldo, two amiable blonde bum humming chums who blitz

Krieg the nearest table past my last left,

Eyeing for themselves my polluted judio proboscis.



And I’m stuck now thinking,

Drinking, on the brink of demons,

Where the fuck has 1945 gone?



Foreign 1945,

And I’m strolling loose in their truth

Wandering which way my Bavarian brothers will dump me,

Headfirst or toes buried deep in the ash?

That’s all gone to past.

It’s a waste of ash to smoke on a memory.

History is history and their faces aren’t now, they’re then,

That’s the mystery.



For my love they’ll lose something fierce,

Fuck Hanz and Fritz!

Time’s two bit, dimly lit, Nazi twin half wits

So quick to spit my hiss

Boys frisky with tiny tipsy Swish Alp hips

In the midst of Franco and my last remaining glance

I’ll dance with their ghosts

Around the room

From 1 to 2 all the way to noon

We’ll make the bombs zoom!

Boom

Boom

Boom



Once again

Pull your legs up over your head!

Now, are we three dead?

No, it seems we dream to cling on 1945.

My face lies buried up to their knees and thighs.

Franco laps up any spilt change we leave on the floor.

History is an ungodly bore

Anyways

Nowadays

קר בתל אביב?
אני אגיד לך מתי באמת היה קר

בדרך כלל יש חום של ברוכים הבאים, אתם בבית

אבל פעם אחת הבאתי איתי בכף יד
בלי להתגלות באבטחה בנמל
קר לתל אביב

שיחררתי את הקר הזה
קר של  אתם  צריך להתבייש בכיבוש שלכם

אבל רק אני הרגשתי את הקר
אז חזרתי להתנהג כמו ציוני

אבל עדיין לא הרגשתי את החום
אז כשהיה לי דקה לבד בחדר עשיתי ביד
כדי לשכוח

You are the sweetest homo
I know

קר בתל אביב?
שטויות

הייתי בפתח תקווה לפני כמה שעות
בבית של סבתא ז"ל
שם באמת קר

מין קור של גופה שהייתה
קור של הלב שדפק
והריאות שנשמו
במשך חודשים
בצורה הכי מלאכותית שיש

אתה רק אומר את זה כי

קר
בתל אביב
זה רק קצר

חם
בתל אביב
זה לא מילה

שיר קצר כשקר בתל-אביב

שיר קצר
לא מפחד מהאורך
אף על פי שהוא
מפחד מהעורך
שאותו
ללא ספק
הוא יאריך

I sat alone in darkness

I sat alone in darkness and caught the wind ambling through the orchard from the north,
mixed with the rain of late fall and the sound of footsteps--field mice traversing through the bramble in droves, escaping the talons of the owl and her piercing night gaze--it lingered momentarily, recognizing the abscess beneath its skin, and slowly drove my spine back against the wicker beneath the vines with the chill of judgment and sincerity.

I looked deep into the maddening haze at the disappearing traces of the fruit against the ground, rotting and festering with circadian rhythm upon the severing of their umbilical cords, waiting for death in the form of life and the off chance of eternity in the form of myth, and pondered after friends and worried.
I waited for the sun to rise once again and rip the pall from this earth with all of the dishes still in place above it. Nothing would shatter on the heads of the children sleeping beneath the table. It would calmly fold the flag of this day over the tomb and replace it on the shelf.

I sat calmly alone, fearing the act behind the curtain. Fearing the cadavers picking apples. Never moving. Only staring blankly towards the heavens with an accusatory glare. The show would end the next night--they'd decapitate themselves at the top of the tallest tree. I would only stand to clap with the rest of the audience--their buckets still full beneath them. They'd cry at the authenticity of their portrayals.
Beneath the vines I stared at the uncertainty. In my dreams this is all worthwhile.
For two hours a night, this is all worthwhile.

Still a fleeting chance to walk through unscathed
but I'm afraid of you and I'm afraid of that distant rumble.
I won't sound the alarm until the fog rolls in.

Sebastopol CA 2010

Spinal cords, etc.

We are the schemer of schemes. We'll take your money and your children, and build supermarkets on your streets. Just say it's not necessary.

I am a planner of plans that never succeed because they never stem. Instead I just sleep while they are half-built houses on the cliff, at that site where mud slides in April.

You are a sickening schizophrenic - rotting fruit on the ground at the feet of perfection, and you will never survive this association or surpass it. So mainstream medium mildly multi-faceted, mediocre, an invertebrate, of the masses.

Half-built you are, we are half-built houses.

for fuck's sake
cuddle with me
all sticky

חתיכה לחברי ילדות

מתחכומיישון לתחכומיישון היו המשחקים

דרך החיוכים היינו מתקשרים

כי היינו קטנים

אבל האהבה הייתה אמיתית

אני כותב אליכם, הייתם ביתי הראשון

איתכם למדתי לאהוב  ולחייך

ואני יודע שאתם גם זוכרים

אפילו אם אף פעם לא תקראו את השיר הזה

או אף שיר אחר שאכתוב

למה?

כי אנחנו כבר לא מדברים, לא מכירים

אסף, בחייך אנשים משתנים

לא זה לא נכון

אני בטוח שאתם נשארתם אותם אנשים

או יותר נכון, שנשאר ממכם משהו

ואתם חוששים להכיר בזאת

אתם פחדנים

אבל אני לא פחדן

אני לא מדבר באופן כללי

אלא עכשיו ברגע זה

בשניה זו

אני כנה

לא תמיד נוסטלגיה תזרום לי בורידים

אני כבר מכיר את זה שדמי הוא שוקולד מריר

כיפי, מוכר אבל אנוכי

מאוד

אז מה אכפת לי בעצם שאני אוותר בתור חיוך בזכרונכם 

כמו שאתם שוכנים בשלי

שירי יהיו כמו בועות מבצבצות ובתוך אחת אתם תהיו

כולכם דחוסים

כמה עצוב

יכלתם להיות כל כך הרבה יותר גדולים

A Piece for Lovers

There is a toll to be paid to exit East Bay.

And there’s a tale to be told in the lies we laid,

Wove in the paved stones we made man made

Through days of trust rusted heart’s way into-

Brain red dust and a sentimental imperfectly formed love.           

I rhyme time with crime

Roll on to the next stumbling line.

While I bide my time.

Wait for time to change the line.

As it goes on again and again and-

I don’t have a line the rhyme is dead.

For it was we

Till you made me

Only me

Solo me

No more we

‘Cause you see

We ceased to be

Masculinity is:

A gun
Like any other
It only points
One way
And if no one
Sees you shoot it
Then fuck it
You’re safe
And if someone does
See you shoot it
Fuck it
You’re safe

The radio at Saba’s house
Is always turned on
And always blares in Hebrew and never plays music
The television in the living room
Is baseless and fuzzy
Electromagnetic and near-newsworthy
Without nostalgia
I think these might help him forget that
He is connected
To oxygen

There is a photo of him using our computer
Playing cards
On some anonymous website
On the week of my Bar Mitzvah
In Sunnyvale
And there is an ice cream truck
And a children’s song
And there is change being
Loosened up
And a smile between earlobes
And there is lemonade
And watermelon
Vanilla
And a flavor that is named after traffic lights

There are videos of him
But I am too frightened to watch
At least until I believe
That there is strength
Even in vaguest memories
And there is
Battling and coping
Fragility and fracture
Resuscitation and a memory that doesn’t really budge

Because right now I can only say
Those things
Without necessarily believing

Nora/ me/ my dad/ my mom /the funeral

So see she ceases to exist, in sense and stuff and spine and wrist, what seeps its strength cannot subsist, what's set in stone in soul persists. Scene. See me see them see me in the gap in the blinds. In the great rectangle, in the middle, on the sofa, behind the blinds, under piping, on green carpet, where everything glows green. Scene.

An unmade bed. These are the makings of lazy Sundays - when the sun is too hot in February and it beats through the window without consent, when it fills the room in waves like a gas hissing as it unfolds, when you see it spreading cautious but with contempt in slow motion, when there is no air conditioner and the windows won't give. This is 3:50 on a Sunday. The dust of some ancient breath is propagating through space, following sun beams like magnets like magnetized so when you swat it goes nowhere. Now and then I think of changing, how everything changes every second, how I don't even notice all the change, how I can't remember the half of it; and if I think about this hard enough, the weight of what I forget per second, I get really scared in that moment and understand what it is to be paralyzed. My dad - the way he chewed; the old furniture. The worst is faces. It's when you think you know a song but then you sing it and don't know words at all, just sounds. When I look at pictures I use it for memory, to fill in the details of his face. When I hear his voice on video and it surprises me. Those moments, which come so often, when I don't know what to do, and can't for the life of me think what he'd do if he were me.

Often when I draw, I draw blanks. Often I make precincts for bad ideas. Sometimes I write well, but less often. Sometimes I freeze up, only sometimes.

We left her reading artichoke palms in the kitchen. We never thought she'd make such a slow recovery; we never thought she'd read that in the artichokes! Those were bad, they went bad, that's what we told her. That house is much too white for one person and she'll go blind if she stays there. But too late - the house is in her and she is the house. No, we never thought she'd read that at all.

The last two days have been waking up too early, in that chasm of consciousness where nothing is certain, where rooms are dimly lit and it's all blurry looking backward, like it might not have happened or we didn't see it after all. It's waking up that early that makes days dance together.

Sometimes I cough to hear the sound of my own voice.

They wear grief and they wear it well. They cry freely, too, and they look at me askew. I recite to them Castellanos. "Pero el llanto/ es en mí un mecanismo descompuesto/ y no lloro en la cámara mortuoria/ ni en la ocasión sublime ni frente a la catástrofe./ Lloro cuando se quema el arroz o cuando pierdo/ el último recibo del impuesto predial." ("But crying for me is a broken mechanism, and I don't cry in front of the casket, on the sublime occasion, or in the face of catastrophe. I cry when I burn the rice, or when I lose the last receipt for the property tax.") I don't actually recite this but I think it often.

We dance the tarantella on orange peels until we choke from all the acid.

An attempt at insanity

Sometimes I only see darkness in a sea of day that blinds me from ever thinking straight. But then again, I'm five kinds of sheets thrown into the wind what I see outside my window. But I never go outside my window. People are marked by their strange nuances and I hold no exception to the rule. "I used to chew on those paper cups after I ate my muffin" Why did I just tell you that. Nevermind, I didnt say anything... I don't know you well enough-Shit. this perfect stranger knows too much. a bit too dramatic if I kill him. I'll say it again. "When I was little-" Shit no ones listening...nevermind. "Oh, you are listening. Well nevermind anyway. It's none of your business and I'll thank you to stay out of my personal life." I wonder how far I can dig this hole before I just can't get out. Probably at the moment I smoked that joint. I knew this would happen. I never fail to arouse general concern for my mental and emotional stability in my attempt to socialize.

I fear for my generation when we use drugs to claim good grades. But right now I'm on drugs and it has nothing to do with concentration or good grades. i'm in my prom dress, I feel the only way to appropriately welcome in the promise of a new year is in fake eyelashes and heels. I'll curse the day I ever decided to wear them. Well- lets think about it. They add two inches to my attempt at touching the stars. And progress is always appreciated I suppose. "Hey, my beer is empty! Did one of you sick fucks play a prank on me? I'm taller than I was before! I'll take you on no questions asked. Fuck!!" i hate it when members of the opposite sex playfully manhandle you as they take the joke too far. But I gracefully recover as I encounter another beer. Ecstacy is all the rage until youre too drunk to feel it. And you think to yourself, "What a waste," and then someone will ask, "What's that?" and I forget that my inner monologue has failed me yet again.

phone call

ring, ring, ring
"bla bla bla"

a like apple
s like sam
a like apple
f like frank

s like sam
h like hotel
a like apple
l like lemon
e like e-mail
v like victor

every time, the same damn ones

no, these are no similes

they sure are similar to my name but
your language does not contain my sounds

up against the bureaucracy, my foreignness

I must turn almost any stranger into a bureaucrat when I meet him or her
and no, you wont be able to pronounce it even if you tried
not because you dont have the sounds but because you don't

know me

"where am I from?
well,
Im from Los Angeles
fuck you"

no, I never end up saying it that way

Someday

Someday, baby, your heartbeat will change my life forever

Someday, baby, my belly will swell
And my body will hold back the crimson tide that will become your bed

You'll take your first glimpses of the world from my arms

Your hands will be balled into tiny fists
But I'll protect you

Someday, baby, I'll remember the lullabys my mama sang to me
And the stories my father told.

Someday, baby, your bellybutton will remind me of birthdays
And I'll never, ever, be too proud to apologize

You'll scrape your knees and bump your head
And I'll kiss the blood and the bruises,
Tell you love is the best medicine there is

You'll get paint on the walls and dirt on your clothes
And I'll ask you if you had fun

You'll bring home a big bug
And I'll ask you what you think it eats
As we poke holes in the lid of a mason jar

Someday, baby, we'll chase chickens around the yard,
Spin in circles until we collapse,
And sing at the top of our lungs until that stubborn song gets out of our heads

Someday, baby, we'll throw water balloons,
Do handstands in the sand
And grow sunflowers higher than our heads

Someday, baby, I'll tell you it's okay to love whoever you want

I'll tell you that when you're happy is when I'm the happiest

That if my little girl grows up to be my big boy, that's okay

That if my little boy becomes a woman one day, she will still be my heart and soul.

Someday, baby, You'll know how I loved you unconditionally before you even existed

By Kyla Collins

Two Poems

watch everything
erode
then watch
it happen on television in

slow


motion



or on some setting
between pause and
esrever
to remind us all that
tears do not put out fires
in Haifa

a home i won’t stop writing about


____________________________________


a state that has the power to use the soiled memories of sheep to a slaughter and the metaphor of showers to rain down fire on sheep of a different color within minutes to an hour cannot even salvage its own saints from the fumes and don’t for a second think that the next fucking word will rhyme with “consume” because this is what is happening and it hurts too much to spell it out for all of you.

meanwhile I lean and devour my grief in a drunken stupor at the local happy hour and do not tell me that me writing this down on the tablecloth or a beer-soaked napkin feels wrong in a bar over dieted coca cola drinks where glasses shatter every single time their owners decide to toast and clink and where the only thing I'd really like to do is sit around with myself and think of these anonymous women whom I picture without a shred of clothing be it wool tweed satin or mink.

over these caskets I mourn faces and names My family My home My view and this place means too much to write another poem about sheep of a different color so I will not do it for some reason or another or succumb to edit this thing till the ring-finger goes from pink to white to purple to numb.

And the contrail's red glare

I would take you, 42. I would march you down the stairs.
Your fingers sweeping through the sweating palms of your children
Beneath the contrail's red glare.
You'd flash your wives and husbands a wink--you'd bat your simple lashes against the futile flow of tears. The drums for sympathy were drowned out beneath the pangs of liberty and the everlasting ring of gunshots.
They used their last rounds against the temples of those they couldn't afford anymore while you watched your forked tongues shoot hot ash beneath their trembling eyelids and bellowed when the membranes burned through.
They'd lock webbings to ensure that they wouldn't lose each other with their concrete as the braille.
I'd march you down the stairs this day beneath the contrail's red glare
and let you feel the gaze of those who cannot see you.
Count off.
Throw your gold leaflets before you. Peel them like the petals of hair you pluck before the mirror.
She loves me.
She loves me not.
They're In your sink, now. No pain. Light them, now.
No pain. Look forward.
1
2
3
4
all the way down the line.
1, 2, 3, 4
42.
I'd sit down in front of you with nothing but this. You know my name. But you haven't read this.
Your tears would be flowing now. Trickling into the gutter beneath your feet as you stand naked before your mother.
"Now you told a lie today. Tell me what it was."
Whose turn was it to answer?
"TELL ME WHAT IT WAS."
She angrily rips out a clump of her white hair and throws it to the ground.
"Whoever tells me won't get into any trouble."
Silence now before your congregation. Your stole is in front of you and the church is on fire! And yet they wait.
Your mother walks away, 42. She's crying now, as well.
I'd start to snicker now at this point. I'd read the good news gospels about the prisons at sea beneath the contrail's red glare. I'd read about where the tongues you ripped out were sent beneath the contrail's red glare.
42. Join hands with 1. That's it. That's it.
Now. If you please.
I'd gently clap my hands, and a violinist would walk in the middle of your circle.
Playing the saddest notes you've ever heard.
And one by one, we'd crawl into your circle.
You start it, 42.
Ring around this rosy reality.
Pocket full of phony posies.
Ashes. Ashes.
You all fall down.


Los Angeles 2010

Attempt at Science Fiction Poetry, Part 1

We do not see each other's faces

It's actually kind of gross if we ever get that close anymore

We lost the ability to discern emotions from facial expressions and tonal traces

That there genetically programmed intuitions telling us a smile is a smile is some jurassic lore

Everything is socially constructed, we discovered

and so we killed the smile

and happy is an emotion thats neither federally insured nor officially covered

just check the website if you have any questions

you see, confusion was the first official emotion when all others were banned

At first I was unofficially depressed

and almost refused to participate in what they ominously called "the game"

But every feeling reported was necessary to make a harmonious whole

The calculus sympathetic was of "paramount importance" said Mister leader

He needed to know how much was left in the world

It was worse not to dial in than anything else

because that meant you were overtaken by unofficial emotions and would immediately die

This was not the difference between fake and true emotionality

They did not want you to hide how you truly felt or act a certain contrived way

the purpose was to eradicate any trace of socialization that led you to believe in your own nature

the calculus sympathetic generated our entire psychological world

we created it after we found out we are nothing but a result of a space-time compression

An Attack; An Invitation; A provocation; Speaking Out; Giving Voice

This is a poem for straight people

Straight men, mostly

Take that back:

Only, not mostly

I know some of you

Posting in this space

There are also the lucky few

(It may be you)

Yes, you

That are so very dear to me

So. Very. Dear.

Most of you I just don’t know

That’s ok.

In any case

Just wanted to let you know:

I get it.

You love her.

And you’ll do anything for her

Blah blah blah

We’ve heard it a million times

The same old song

A million different ways

(Thanks, Stephin Merrit)

Would you give up your sense of manhood?

Small chance.

Moz

Yes
These are my lips
And yes
You may press them to yours
And yes
You may take me
To the heaven of your bed

But love is
only
one
way
to
think
about
it