Poetry

She is quite popular in school, Always talking on the window sill Late at night. He wonders What he’d do if she asked, If she smiled when he called Her name. She digs Into his bones, dances On his shoulders. Tonight he prays the stars Will know his wish.

Here I am, the disappearing man. I am disenchanted, please understand. But I am glad to have a hiding place Inside your eyes. No one could ever find us So blue. I am made of tiny things, atoms And helixes have shaped me. You will shape Us both. I am smart and dumb, I won’t need special parts or batteries. You will burn and blaze to keep me sane. I will keep truth tucked away. Your voice is an amazing thing, how sad And beautiful. I’m scared to know you, I want So badly to know you, to promise things No one else will. I am free To feel without you, but somehow We outpace fate, slow dancing Before we walk. I want to vanish, But I can’t leave if I won’t Let go. Use your words. Ask how we can combine. Every day I need to make you mine.

I sleep and see you laughing Long after the sky touches black. Your hair thrown back, armor beaming, The anticipation. Never stop invading My delusions. Let’s linger Here until morning, dear, Two souls haloed in temptation.

For nineteen years I’ve eluded you, Been inside you just long enough To know I should avoid you Lke the voodoo people Who croak like old bullfrogs On streetcorners and in cemeteries. But I still feel you suspended over me Like hot breath. And so, as twilight envelopes Your newstands and ganglands, As tired crowds leave you for the night, I watch the needle of evening Slide prismatic color into your skyline, And sit synced with the rhythm of your turbines, Riding streamline on The Rapid – Your transit system for the masses. The ride is smooth across the heavy rail As I don my reading glasses. Then the burn of plastic fluorescence Spotlights the title of the book in my hand: “Cleveland: or a History of America’s Wasteland.” * You’ve been dying For two hundred years, Since that day you were tagged And sentenced by engineers. White flight is no longer primetime news, But you’ve felt it for a lifetime, Hough and Glenville still blunt as brass knuckles In the history books. Race became a riot of guts and muscles That stunned your sunrise And turned your streets Into death rolls. You’re like that poor bastard so in debt He faked his death and buried himself. But it’s hard to hide 80 square miles Of concrete and flesh. A city like this needs Its own special sign. On your borders, in blinking neon, It should read – CLEVELAND: AMERICA’S PUNCHLINE * I feel the flood of your voodoo people Working black art on near-deserted buses And the Lake Erie shoreline. Your panorama of skyscrapers Is warped by tricks of shadows Into the bodies of unlikely angels, And I’m left to trace the voices of others On paths beaten into dust. To the West-Side Market, where earlier Gods of meat and fruit sold their worth. To St. John’s, where priests stood And handed souls into awareness. Where sinners embraced holy water And dove into Communion. To the Warehouse District And its 360 degrees of jive. To Public Square, then to Lake Erie, Its pulse alive. * The sun arrives. The new day’s dawn Greets my picking of sour cherries In your lakeside orchard, the weight Of the night before still heavy like fate. I sit, spitting pits onto the ground, And one thought remains. Although your sands are too crude To be the friend of time, They’ll still be there, shifting when I’m gone.

Between the bare walls Of God’s waiting room, Threadbare husks of humans glow Like the last cigarette At its ash’s end. Residents mutter Incoherent wishes Into the ears of gods, And I’m astonished How primal communication is. Enticed by the rhythm Of ancient molecules, Most of them are so removed From their bones, They don’t remember What life is. New ones still know It feels something like warm sunshine On a bed of metal. I try to pass without looking, But one who isn’t choking On her thoughts makes a move Like the sudden drumbeat After silence, Almost splitting the atoms Of her white gown. She raises A hand and touches my own With the entire orchestration Of her soul. As if, for one second, She can wipe old age away.

This decision to visit was rushed By talk of certain death, Reinforced when I remembered the x-rays Of his broken backbones. The hospital did it – The damage first, an irreversible Separation of sinews from spine That caused a fall more fatal to him Than any grenade or sniper’s bullet. It was then they took the x-rays, But he’d already signed his life to them With the confidence of a war vet. “Two wars, don’t forget, And 32 years of active duty.” Words not surprising From a man like him – A gritty father’s father. * Nobody could take him, Or would take him, So we sent him to God’s waiting room To greet the systematic chaos Of soiled laundry, nonstop TV drama And pain-pills at noon. All clean and mathematical, So long as we pay a fee. But for him it’s the final war, And his last efficient nightmare. * I stare at him sitting stiff in his room, Corpse-cold, paralyzed from neck To hipbone in his electric throne on wheels, While naked women on Penthouse posters Touch themselves for his explicit pleasure. I see it in his eyes – When he dies, He wants to be buried Inbetween their hulking cleavage. * I try ignore him as though I don’t know Genes are inherited, As though I can outmaneuver Fate’s centripetal force. Yet I can’t forget him there Two-stepping with thoughts of old desires. Likely it’s a dance With former foreign lovers. Even at his age, Dreams aren’t always sweat and blood. * The nurse walks by, puzzled By this staredown across generations. She says, “Just yesterday He had me making the chapter titles Of an autobiography With his alphabet soup – And ‘Family’ was number one.” * Memories march past the room, And I wish I could confess to him My litany of sins, real and imagined, Like I’d do at gunpoint If it meant his saving grace. But the light from his sun is fading And cataracts of liquid fire Cloud his eyelids. He’s stuck somewhere In tricks of light, Tied to the sublime – Waylaid by the silhouettes Of his own second-coming. But then the sky touches black, And he waits to be tossed away By the single god on night duty – His history and lifeblood folding As if made of paper.

I hit the ground, Planting my body in mud and sand. Too late. A soldier croaks his command As he snatches my M16 — Something in a language I barely understand. Two black eyes Squint at me From the safety Of a pith helmet. I’m a corpse-to-be, A snapshot framed in the sights Of an AK-47. On this, my seventh day, Alien in an alien land, I see Death next to me, Standing at attention for his call To active duty. But the feel of cold steel Calls me back to consciousness. The gun barrel’s vicious as a human. He screams and I start to sweat. The sun turns mud to glue, But it’s the questions That paralyze. The bullets, too. I pray, “Cut me and I’ll bleed for you, Just please God don’t shoot.” His rifle answers instead. My words distill into drops of blood Falling like bodies from my forehead. My eyes burn with the faces of villagers Begging gods for second chances. I can’t blink them away. So I fight To remember what’s-her-name, The girl who said she’d wait for me. But he grabs me to stop the swooning. Adrenaline and the heart work black magic In my bloodstream, pumping A final question: Am. I. Next? He squeezes the trigger. My heart Skips, the question turns to fate: I. Am. Next. But the gun sticks, The chamber clicks. Death, I’m in your debt. What if I’m not even worth the bullet?

Here I am, an old man in a wet month, Standing at a street corner In Prague’s Old Summer Square. I’m stuck Some four thousand miles from home Under the rooftop of this gritty bus-stop, Feeling drops of rain On my skin like smoke. I’ve questioned it before, But now I’ve been: Terezin, A proving ground for my people Choreographed into death By Aryan gods. Their nightmares Are a bedtime story I’ll never forget. “Arbeit Macht Frei” one sign had said, All for a six-pronged star of David. The local waiting next to me Polishes off his joke with a grin And a nod — “Well it wasn’t the midwife’s fault, As we say around here.” I’d laugh, But right now I’m blind and deaf As the rich man who struts Past the drunk nearby. Hell, Compared to what I’ve seen I’m just some schmuck, Some “Jew who’s had it easy,” As I’ve heard before. Those words Dance in my head so fast my body Shudders, while images from the camp Graft themselves to my eyes Like dreams to silhouettes. It’s a constant peepshow I’ll never escape. (At this age, a woman would be good...) But I see small dirt holes And watch shell-shocked children Bury their parents with broken hands. “Be bold,”I whisper, “it must be hard, Pretending to be swaddled In your parents’ arms. Hush, Hush, Don’t say a word — your silence Will save you a trip with the guard.” I want to scream, to tell them it’s unjust. But who am I kidding? They’ve all been ground To universal dust.

I sit wordless, a pencil lodged In my fist. I’ve worked Its guts to nothing, Struggling to write something, Anything, for the final line Of this poem About a dying man. Nothing comes. It’s hard to capture The exactitude of death. Impatient as a child, I bang my tongue-tied toy Against the paper, craving Attention from a muse or two. Then, as though commanded, Death himself materializes Like a godsend across from me. He speaks, but not like we do, Yet I can make out his words Popping into my head like thought bubbles. I answer As though granted a sixth sense. “Let’s see if i understand you, Death. It’s my time? There’s no one left more ready than me? I believe you, Don’t act surprised. Just give me A minute to finish this.” I use the full 60 seconds, too, Because I think it’s funny — Death waiting for a dying man like me.

I Strung from the triangle, roped At the wrists, I shudder Under your rawhide Like a submissive lover. I’m your dog, beaten To be trained. Your tongue set like a whip, You call my crime to consciousness, Front and center Like Hell. II It stings worse than before, As if I was born wounded. I wait wordless As a photograph, suspended In a leap of fate — Or should I say faith? III You cut like an arm of god Doling out penance. My heart dutifully pumps blood To my face. See it paint my skin Like some sadistic tattoo. IV Your whip continues Its arpeggio, and I groan With a sound like steam escaping Through cracks of busted pavement. The taste of blood and tears Is strangely sweet As you circle round, Your smile a wicked blade. I blink, trying not to swallow My own tongue. V Speak to me. How Is this so easy for you? Right now, you could Pass me through The eye of a needle. VI In here, you’re big as a god, A vicious solar eclipse. You look strange, Licking your lips like that. I stay silent as a prayer In our one-sided exchange, Covered with flecks Of dust like memories — But ones imagined, not recalled. VII My skin’s a drum, stretched For you to beat. This might end If i confess, but what Can I say? I am the you Who is not words. VIII Do you wish you could pluck My vocal cords for the answers You love to hear? Instead you’ll have to settle For the cadence of My body’s expiration. IX Somehow your whip Moves faster Than the fleshy slowness Of speech. I’m awake In Death’s own bedroom, The lightswitch stuck Between on And off. You ask If I want this to end. I stare back, a listless Adam Christening the wild. You ask one last time, Do I want this to end? I want to answer yes But I don’t know how. X There is nothing left to say Except The dead will inherit our bones.