blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv, poetry

 

weeks after the massacre

 

1.

No one tells it yet

Not the whole story

How long would it take you

 to speak of your child

wounded in the chest

but still breathing

when her arm

is sliced off? 

 

Ah, how could you tell

since this was

the last sight you saw

 

before you were slaughtered.

 

  1.  

No one tells it yet

how it was

with the pretty dancer

that a piece of her skull

was discovered

weeks later

after she was paraded

face down, naked

 in a truck

through the streets

of Gaza

 

3.

When you find

a pair of spines

and only DNA reveals

a father and son

in a final embrace

incinerated

alive,

your mouth

cannot form

words

 

 

 

 

poem – Nov 3, 2023 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, poetry,

this is only a draft, but something is going on with the internet and the computer, so i’m saving it here.  enjoy:

Soap opera

Lately I’ve been watching the washing machine.

It’s a scream the way one sock can get stuck to the door

As if it’s trying to escape, and the rest of the batch

Keeps trying to pull it back, back to conventional cleanliness.

Or are the working out how they can join the single hero

And free themselves from the rolling torture?

 

Eventually it loses, as do all the single individuals who

Only to live their life in a world as solitary souls

And I watch, knowing it will fail, and everything in a minute

Will go to the dryer.  And I will turn off the washer

And move to a more banal program on television.

february 22, 2021 – washing machine Read Post »

blog, poetry,

Here’s a poem for New Year’s. 

Use it on your zoom or wherever you’re celebrating – especially if you aren’t really celebrating.

We’re having a new years zoom poetry reading at IAWE.  I may even read the poem, but the point is to celebrate what we do have, not what we’ve lost, that maybe things are getting better.

Certainly it is understandable that maybe people here are uncertain and worried.  The musical chairs our politicians play before our repeated elections does not make it easier to feel secure.  Many of us feel better with knowing there may be changes, but none of us feel secure.

As for the vaccines, I’m still talking to people who feel uncertain about whether they will take it.  I tell them that they trusted Pfizer with their sex lives, why not with the rest of their lives.

 

december 29, 2020 – “we’re still here” Read Post »