I have always had rose bushes.
My mother’s rosebushes
so overgrown, hedges really,
filled with beautiful red blooms
and thick inch long thorns,
waiting for a chance to shred
away skin.
Then my own
before I was twenty-two.
White ones.
Planted on either side
of the front door
of a house in Baltimore.
I let a piece of me die
in that house
yet the roses thrived.
Then, in Texas.
Yes, roses there too.
Puny things. No lush leaves.
No huge blooms.
Black spot, fungus, rot
always a battle.
Vine like branches,
filled with thousands
of razor slicing thorns,
thirsting for my blood
when I came near
to fertilize or water
or with pruning shears.
But today,
in the high mountain desert,
I took a chainsaw to the rose bushes.
Buzzed them down
to nothing but nubs.
Roses do not belong here
in this dry terrain.
Thorns and a waste of water,
the price to pay
for no real return.
I placed their thick,
disconnected thorn filled limbs
into doubled up lawn bags,
and their thorny weapons,
still thirsting for a taste of blood,
stabbed at me as I carried the bag
of bundled limbs to the trash bin.
Some, of the toxic smiling kind,
might say, “Look to the blossoms
Not the thorns.”
Easy to say
if you’ve never seen,
never felt the shredding thorns can do.
Thus, I remove the shredding beauty
here in the mountain desert,
choosing beauty of a better kind.
A scribe dips a sharpened quill
into the red ink well,
addressing the naked need
for barbed wire
fences of words
to create barricades
in red.
Next, weaving starts.
Words to cushion,
Kevlar words,
preventing of any element
from penetrating
and thus, creating
need
want
desire--
For such things burn,,,
dangerous when they
trespass the Kevlar
of red ink the Scribe
fashions with her sharp quill—
Words of arm’s length,
only so far, no farther,
Step back
Back away
Turn away
Words of red
to always protect--
Woven into blankets, vests,
a house, never to be a home.
Hermann Otto Hoyer, In the Beginning Was the Word, 1937. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of US Army Center of Military History.
After listening to the rhetoric of various politicians, I believe times have grown ever more dangerous to democracy no matter how much those same politicians claim to be defending it. I’ve revised and retitled this piece which I first wrote and posted the night before the 2017 inaugural and titled If They Come. However, I owe a huge debt to Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) who wrote “First they came for…” Often this quote is mistakenly referred to as a poem. Niemöller often spoke of his own complicity with the Nazi regime in its early years by his inaction and not speaking out, especially when it came to the persecution of leftist political party members with whom he did not agree. However, after too many disagreements with Hilter’s policies, Niemöller was imprisoned on July 1st, 1937, and was not freed from the concentration camp until 1945. There are various versions of his famous quote as Niemöller changed the list of victims depending upon the audience to whom he spoke, but his message is clear: Silence and inaction equals complicity. If we are silent, we too are guilty. We must not be silent.
Source information courtesy of Holocaust Encyclopedia
They’ve come before.
Remember history.
Remember the millions,
the thousands, the hundreds--
totaling seventeen million.
And yet,
always,
they come.
Different times, different places.
Always leaving behind traces
of their strange bitter fruit.
They are poised,
preparing, ready to come.
Some of us remember,
state the parallels,
recite the historical,
are laughed at as the hysterical.
The majority, sigh and say–
They come not in his name
for they wear not the robes of the arcane,
burning crosses straight,
painting crosses twisted.
Some forget,
leaving voices unraised.
Some simply care not,
since they come not for them.
Yet, we must remember--
Since, in the end,
they are coming for us all.
Darkness imprisoned for years
revels and romps now freed from sanctions,
freed from society’s guilty tears.
They are coming
for the immigrant ones
to part them from jobs no one else will do,
leaving a river filled with razor wire
and shouting, “Build a wall. Build a wall.”
I will raise my voice, “Build it around me as well.
For I, too, believed the words inscribed upon Liberty.”
They are coming
for all the women
who do not walk 72 steps behind,
chaining them to males who must approve.
I will raise my voice, “I will not walk into yesterday.
I will not let you make any daughter a handmaid.”
They are coming
for the Jewish ones,
pinning yellow stars,
creating gas chambers,
I will raise my voice, “Take me with them too.
For I too, am a Jew.”
They are coming
for the Muslim ones,
planning to kill the Geneva Refugee,
with their unproven facts, shouting, “Terrorist. Jihadist.”
I will raise my voice, “Take me with them too.
For I also pray to the God of Abraham.”
They are coming
for the darker ones,
with ropes and whips and epithets from the past,
shouting, “White Power, White Power.”
I will raise my voice, “Bring enough to kill me too.
For I have the same red blood as my siblings you seek to kill.”
They are coming
for the transgender and queer ones,
with fists and broken bottles and shouts of “Freak.”
I will raise my voice, “Beat me as well.
For I am sure to upset you by the bathroom I plan to use.”
They are coming
for those who love differently
with researched plans of electric shock to convert,
all therapeutic to change, of course,
or with hands dripping violence and shouts
of every demeaning word we ever heard.
I will raise my voice, “Beat me. Take my rights
so recently given, though long denied.
Never will I lose my dignity again in silence.
For I hid among shadows much too long.
Now, I, too, live in the sun,
Proud of who I love, and I will not go away.
I remember we are neighbors,
each of us, brothers and sisters
in God’s eyes.”
When you come for one,
you came for us all.
All you deem different,
dangerous to your thinking,
we make you uncomfortable,
but we give you something--
Someone, something to blame.
But after you have come for us all,
bound and bloodied us as best you can,
taught your school children the different are to blame,
worthy of nothing but your hate,
allow our resistance,
without striking, without killing,
no sling shot will we need
to shatter the crystal facade
of patriotism you fashioned
to cleverly hide away
your destruction of democracy
and all your injustices.
Then the world will see
the monster of fear and greed
you are and your destruction
of democracy.
On the day of God’s light,
perhaps you will look
beyond skin,
beyond abilities and disabilities,
beyond roads to God and ways of worship,
beyond gender and orientations,
beyond your own fears and needs,
and then see
the human heart is born
with weakness in hate and greed
with strength in justice and love
all in equal portions.
What will matter most,
when each heart lies dissected,
splayed open, bare,
before its maker,
is which portion we allowed to atrophy and die,
and which we sought to exercise,
strengthen and increase in size.
I forged this armor
with my blood and bone
like smelted metal from
years of saved up pocket change
and the woven hip length hair
from my nearly shaved head
when I was twenty-two
and have worn it since.
The strength of this armor--
Unparalleled.
The weight of it
made me strong,
yet it weighs heavy
after all these years.
I cannot begin to count the scratches,
the dents, the pockmark scars
of battle wounds.
That much is very true.
My armor is far from new.
Yes, I should have
replaced it a time or two.
It’s been steadfast,
a friend, truer than any lover
ever has been, yes.
My shield, I can barely lift.
My arm and body weary
from the weight of shield
and armor—
The sword? I laid it down
a little while ago
when I finished forever
the battles with myself, you see.
Yet the armor, the shield
have protected me,
though they weigh heavy,
and I am weary.
Forgive me, forgive me
that my fingers tremble
at the buckles.
For when the weight
of this armor falls,
you would be the first
to truly know me at all.
—
A scent,
remembered from morning
deepens missing,
yet the knowing
grows green, healthy tendrils
like the Golden Pothos
sitting in the window,
enjoying warming sunlight.
Images courtesy of CBC, NDTV, The Times of Israel, and The Forward
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age--
Until a six-year-old boy is stabbed to death.
In Grand Central station,
a man punches a woman in the face,
telling her it is because she is Jewish.
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
Yet on a bus, a man screams,
“We don’t wear that in this country!”
to a Sikh teen about the turban of his faith.
A university student calls for the murder
of his Jewish fellow students
It cannot happen here,
not in this place, not in this age.
It cannot happen here,
Not in this place, not in this age.
Yet swastikas are spray painted
on a Jewish business.
In 2018 on October 27th,
A madman entered The Tree of Life Synagogue,
spewing hatred and shooting eleven dead.
But no. It cannot happen here.
Not in this place, not in this age.
Yet remember,
Executive Order 9066,
those rounded up and sent to camps
here in this place.
Look hatred in its devil face,
see if you still can believe,
still convince yourself—
It cannot happen here.
Not in this place, not in this age.
Inside a sarcophagus of stone,
I have dwelled,
a hard place in which to learn to live,
no breath taken, heart stilled,
where all living shrinks down,
behind skin and soul,
to be bound in hieroglyphic wrappings
designed by others.
Onlookers believing
the pretense they wish to see--
as I stopped struggling for air,
a mimic of the beating rhythms of life,
accepting the coldness of the stone.
Any warmth transitory as the sun
in its travels from
season to season
from rise to set,
in these years
I have known only coldness
after any fleeting glimpse of warmth.
Such a bitter coldness--
though none would think
I lived encased within stone,
so life-like my hieroglyphic mask,
a masterful mimic I had become.
Until stone cracked,
by mountain winds and sun,
falling in splintered shards,
crumbling to dust ‘round me.
My tattered, faded wrappings
torn, hanging loosely.
Until a hand, as if in possession
of long forgotten, ancient magic,
should touch long dead embers,
and in touching rekindle flame,
swirling within, spiraling outward
warmth that does not die
upon the withdrawal of touch.
A heat lingering, warming still,
stirs hunger once thought dead to life.
Sweetness pounds a rhythm out—
starting a heart to beat again,
blessed breath returns
to deflated lungs,
the shallow breath, the weak pulse
hold ancient power,
leaving flesh and blood and bone
to move in life again,
a life reclaimed from the stone
of gray filled years.
Cautiously, hesitantly,
I step over the dust of shattered stone,
making my way toward the touch
that carefully, tenderly removed
my tattered hieroglyphic bindings,
allowing me to move freely
within my own skin.
There trembles within,
a longing I never sought to find.
Hope rises and takes Fear
within its embrace,
transforming it to joy,
as I extend my hand
to the warmth of you.
Here, beneath the trees,
we sit in the peace
of a sunlit afternoon.
My words, my pale pathetic words,
fade in the light of you.
As the words
I grasp at as possibilities
to say all I mean
evaporate
from my hands and mind
like the water
in this drying arroyo
shrinks away from its banks
before us,
I am left wordless.
For no words can stand
in the light of you
and the gifts you bring
to places where
I discovered
pieces missing
in light of you.
I’ve revised and reworked an earlier piece written in 2017 as a response to the terrorism of Hamas and the war Israel has declared. It seems to me that this slaughter by Hamas and the retaliation that Israel is now forced to take cannot be what any God wants. Surely, it is not what the Palestinian people or the people of Israel want either.
The blood of children
falls as rain
on Holy ground.
The blood of their parents
chasing after
as if to save it,
stopping it
from concreating the land
to evil born of old hatred
as the world,
emptied of all care,
watches.
No uprisings.
No shouting in the streets
as this blood rain of innocents falls,
flooding the silent world
as nations watch,
hands bloodied
in pretense of helplessness
before turning their backs.
The seven descend.
Each with wings spread
enough to fill a house.
Shalom upon their tongues.
Throughout the compass points
they search to find
all the gnawed bones,
the muscles and sinew,
the heart and entrails
torn with teeth of hate.
And once the seven
gather all the tiny bits,
With flaming swords
used as needles,
they try to stitch
all humanity’s bloody bits
into one thing well knit.
Neither their swords,
nor spirit of their breath
have the power to seal
the meat and sinew to bone.
And then they know--
those who showed no mercy
would be given none.
Their heads hang--
Inshallah upon their lips
as they ascend.
Their flaming eyes
weeping tears of fire
as they see the red rider
striding across the land.
It is then the seven know
humanity’s avarice and hate
had broken the fourth seal.
Maa shaa’Allah a whisper of smoke
within their throats.
From the seven sets of fiery eyes,
their tears of fire
stream Retzon ha-el
across the night sky.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 