Magazines & Anthologists :
Taj Mahal Review
LanguageandCulture.net; miller's pond poetry magazine,
Flutter Poetry Journal; Getting Something Read,
A Hudson View Poetry Digest;
Modern Age; Midstream; Voices Israel;
Shofar; Voices Within the Arc; Bitterroot,
Whispers of the Unchained Heart; Pulp,
Poet Lore; Present Tense
List of published poems
New Arithmetic for an Aging Couple
Metamorphosis, Or, Songs of a Worm
"Captive of Jerusalem : Songs of Shulamite" (Prologue)
Segments from "Captive of Jerusalem" : - Self Image
The Last Minute of the Sea-Fish
************
******
New Arithmetic for an Aging Couple
In their love exchange
they both lost and won.
Now they are so invested in each other
it's hard to tell the separate assets
from their common stock.
Their commodities sharply declined
yet they found a new appreciation.
In trust, all their bonds hold.
In their love exchange
love itself has changed:
From fierce and ruthless
it turned toothless.
It's as tender as their gums.
Its gait humble, its voice low,
it seeks to sooth self-inflicted blows.
After all, they're but an aging couple:
A husband and wife
who depend on each other
for life.
You might have seen them
passing through:
A man and a woman
the sum of more than one
less than two –
A Hudson View Poetry Digest, Summer 2009 Vol. 4 No. 2
In the Same Bed
For years they’ve been sleeping together
in the same bed.
Insomniacs now, they’re still together
in the same bed -
not sleeping.
They’ve already tried everything,
from medication to counting sheep,
yet nothing has brought relief:
Wide awake in their old narrow bed
they can only dream of falling asleep.
Night after night they continue lying
back to back -
the once-groom on one side
on the other the once-bride –
in fetal position,
as if still anticipating
to be born -
A Hudson View Poetry Digest, Summer 2009 Vol. 4 No. 2
The Net
We were caught in a net, you and I -
"The simple truth is," you said,
"that truth isn't simple."
You turned and looked into the lake
where trees were growing from their tops
and houses from their roofs.
"You've always been good," I said,
"at turning everything upside down."
It was late afternoon.
Having lost its battle for the day,
the dropping sun seemed just another grain
in an enormous hourglass.
I thought of resignation, of its hurting peace,
and watched bloodstains trailing off in the sky.
Nearby, on a boat, two fishermen were busy
mending a net. So intent they appeared
on catching nothingness and tying ropes
around its neck.
"How can you tell a whole hole from a hole in
a hole?" you asked, attempting to laugh away
the sadness, the pain, the bitter acknowledgement
that any truth within our grasp could be only
a meshwork of knots and emptiness.
Trapped we remained standing there, you and I,
up to our ankles in water,
at our feet a sea of cold twitching fish –
Voices Israel 2009, Vol.35
sitting at a table, hands clasped in lap.
There are apples – borrowed from Cezanne? – And perhaps
a pear or two, laid out on a blue-glazed platter.
Wildflowers in a large white mug may be added
as feature that befits a painting like this.
The woman seems immersed in thought:
Is she reminiscing about all the things she was able to do
once upon another time?
Regretting all the things she could’ve had, but let pass by?
Contemplating how it always keeps getting
too late too soon?
No telling for sure what goes on in her mind -
Perhaps she reproaches herself, as suggested by the brooding
expression: “Come on,” she may say to herself, “you’ve known
all along one essentially remains alone, that with the perpetual
clattering and chattering all about you,
it’s really not about you.”
Woman at a certain age, at a table, head tilted,
slightly lowered, palms clutching emptiness.
Not a stir in sight in the opaque air, yet one senses the
approaching night, even catches an escaped echo
from the rusty cage of her heart, where a locked-up nightingale,
crazy with love, cannot stop singing –
Woman at a certain age sitting at a table
in the company of flowers and fruit.
It’s still –
life.
Voices Israel 2009, Vol.35
Metamorphosis, Or, Songs of a Worm
I.
Curled up in his cocoon
feeling out of this world
for a change,
the worm is, at last, the apple
of his pupa's eye.
"Time to sleep now," he mutters
to himself, safe, more or less,
in his silky house, for there's only
so much one can do to protect oneself,
as we (who've seen the transparent
transience of stone and iron)
must know.
"A worm is a worm is a worm..."
he whispers, dreaming of a rose.
So weary is he of turning and
returning like a sort of living screw,
wriggling his way through
blades of grass, pulling strings
from himself, for himself,
treating his own body
as if it were an important document
that ought to be sealed
and concealed, and kept intact
for some future act -
"Sleep...sleep..." he mumbles
drowsy and drained,
his last energy spent,
his thread of larval-life
at its end -
"A worm is a worm is a worm…"
he tries to stick
to what he knows ,
to what he is,
has been,
was.
II.
Strange sensations, "Oh!"
The pain, the ecstasy, the
creepy motion from behind -
"Oh!"
When was it that he felt
so happily singled out?
"Out!"
He cries out, aching, already
forgetting that this enclosure
is of his own making.
(After all how long can be
a puny worm's memory?)
He is almost at the tail
of his old self, perhaps
he is already the wiggly tail
itself, of some unborn
butterfly?
Is he about to die?
"Oh!
Who?
I?”
III.
When did his custom-made home
turn into this prison ?
Surely all is not well. Not well
at all. Much too small.
He can take no more the hurt,
the sting, the pressure on every wing.
He can't wreathe, can't breathe,
there's absolutely no room.
A break is all he needs
and from pupa to popularity
he'll zoom -
Oh! Another chance.
A chance to be another.
A slight change of role to get him
out of this hole.
He can take no more this squeeze.
Who is he?
Is he?
But to be or not to be
is hardly the question when
one is neither here
nor there.
Even a worm has his own
crossing
to bear.
IV.
There's only so much one can do!
First you crawl. Then, recoil.
Then, feeding on deathlike sleep
and crumbs of a dream,
you seek to redeem yourself,
to grow, perhaps draw
a bright circle from the pit of despair,
to mark your existence
sometime, somewhere,
between eternity and nowhere.
First you crawl.
Then, if lucky, if against all odds,
you indeed proceed, and succeed,
and prove to be good -
at least not worse than others -
you fly for a while.
Never as long as wished for,
never as high,
not nearly as the singing-bird
at the top of the tree.
Maybe, she too is sick with envy
at the sight of eagle's flight?
(As we, who heard that note
of sadness in her song
have suspected all along.)
Low and little you fly.
Perhaps the flimsy wings
are not enough to lift one above
his earthy, wormy past?
Low and little you fly,
close to the grass, the thorns,
the shrubs at most,
a host for the moment
like a drop of dew, taking a bow
on a perfumed flower -
Alas! You cannot stretch the hour,
cannot shake the awesome power
of infinitesimal particles of dust
conspiring to let you down
once and for all.
Alas! You know one must fall
at last, back to the ground
as decreed -
or else, on what will the worm
feed?
www.cyclamensandswords.com Apr. 2009
You sit at the table across me
calmly buttering a bagel.
Watching how your hands move,
I hold on to you by the fingernails.
It is late in the morning
and the rain never stops.
Its diagonal regiments
threaten to erase the world.
The windowpane is in tears
over losing its vision,
and the persistent crying
only aggravates its blur.Between you and me
all is quite on the table’s front.
Knives and forks lie side by side
like good old couples.
Teaspoons rest on saucer-beds
tired of their endless stir
in effort to sweeten.Around us, the room’s walls
are trying to square
the vicious circle of life.You sit at the table across me
calmly buttering a bagel,
and all I can see is how we are
in a hole.
Flutter, Poetry Journal. Feb. 2009
www.freewebs.com/rarepetal/leefeb09
miller's pond poetry magazine, vol.12 issue 2, spring 2009
http://www.millerspondpoetry.com/index.php/issues/index.php?page=vol12-2web
Songs of Shulamite (Prologue)
I come from a
summer country
where days, hot, dry, and slow-dying
plod like camels' caravans in desert sands.
In their humps, a hidden future,
chains of bells around their necks.
In some prehistoric cave of my being
the metallic echoes persist.
I come from a country
of ancient sorrows,
where merciless sun is remolding a nation,
melting crowds in sultry streets.
The scarcity of water can be matched
only with that of peace,
and a weary soldier in dusty khaki
is perpetual reminder
that this isn't just a borderline case
but a question of life and death.
I come from a country
pregnant with hope, and dreams.
Juicy ones, sweet and heavy as those watermelons
wheeled to a sheltered shade, where they lie
round and green, bursting with expectation.
At the height of my palate the taste lingers -
Back and forth I go to
Jerusalem, to look once again
for traces of a youth buried in the hills.
They say the nights in Canaan are beautiful,
yet how can one bear that awesome beauty
alone?
I was raised on pines'
resin in the mountains of Judea,
but all the pine-needles of Jerusalem failed to
sew up the pieces of my torn love.
From time to time tear-cones are falling down
to kindle the bonfire of a poem.
Perhaps in many years, words and pain
may crystallize into golden amber.
Oh, my love,
thou art in the clefts of the rock
If I forget thee, if I forget thee
I carry you with me
wherever I may be
as one carries soil from the Holy Land.
I come from a summer
country, where the sun is a lion
roaring, its curls billowing fire. There is always some
terrible danger lurking in clouds of smoke. And always,
always this hard unbending love -
I come from a country that never lets you.
www.cyclamensandswords.com Nov. 2008
The secret is to keep
the right balance
between revealing and concealing,
always letting the eye see
into an ocean of fantasy.
Now, after the dwellers
of Eden
had their taste of the forbidden
fruit,
they discovered that slightly covered
is sexier than starkly
nude.
(The proof is right
there,
just Goya’s two Mayas compare.)
No apparel stores
around,
they made do with what they found,
which leaves,
leaves.
Perhaps wearing a
fig-tree’s leaf
instead of not a fig,
isn’t much of dress progress,
yet – as put in French parlance –
“Vive la petite difference!”
www.cyclamensandswords.com Nov. 2008
So depressed, and
sexually suppressed
was Adam at first,
I had to make him realize
he actually lived in paradise.
It appears I’ve failed
despite all my efforts
to treat, for eventually he split.
However, presently both
parties are in need
of my services, for although together
they still remain alone,
each with problems on one’s own.
And even if less
sexually suppressed,
Adam isn’t a bit less depressed.
In fact, he has turned much worse, quite a wreck!
Now he wishes he were single again,
(not unlike some other married men).
Therefore, I think, he seeks help from a shrink.
Alas, the jinnee is out of the bottle,
no way putting it back –
So far my therapy
hasn’t won,
yet I’ve got me two patients instead of one,
and I welcome the extra trouble
being also the pay is double!
www.cyclamensandswords.com Nov. 2008
Writing on clouds
turning into rain
thickening into snow
melting into water
solidifying into ice
and again
dissolving -
There's no end to beginning -
Poems in purple ink
on white flat sheets
march back and forth
undecided.
Flaky cold letters ganged i11to words
line-up in bitter phrases
to pass upon me
sentence after sentence.
I feel so harshly misjudged -
Caged in rain. Cemented in snow.
I'm nailed-down by my own possibilities.
There's utter chaos in my world
and on the naked floor, alone in tabor ,
I struggle to divide the light
from the darkness.
Voices Israel 2008, Vol. 34
"The nights seem to get darker", you say, "and quieter", I add,
thinking of all the neighbors who went South.
"Now you see them, now you don't", you motion to a flock of
birds performing in the sky.
Holding hands as we walk on. All around us trees proceed
to bare their hearts. There's a metallic ring to their
confessions. "One of those moods again?" you ask gently,
lifting my chin. Perceptive as always, you and I,
as always caring, yet so careful not to eclipse one another
You and I: a couple past meridian
trying to salvage whatever is left of themselves,
jointly and severally.
"The nights seem to get darker", you say, "and colder", I add,
thinking of my shivery loneliness no blanket can cover.
Stranded on the banks of darkness like some shell reject
by the sea, I feel time's creeping snail within me,
its ticking echoes in my heart.
"Now that they're stripped", you say, looking at the trees
"their secrets are given out in countless squirrels".
I can see them dancing in your eyes, little arrows of
distraction. I know you want to cheer me up, yet I find
this nakedness so painful, so much harder to bear
than fruit.
I'm watching your familiar profile but cannot figure out
the many angles of your smile.
I keep recalling how we first met,
once, upon an imaginary intersection of a longitude and
a latitude, on the face of this earth, when
dust mixed with dust and flesh with flesh -
long before we turned into some sort of celestial bodies
solitaries of different orbits
and a shared space.
Voices Israel 2008, Vol. 34
miller's pond poetry magazine, vol.12 issue 2, spring 2009
http://www.millerspondpoetry.com/index.php/issues/index.php?page=vol12-2web
Evil spirit, evil spirit
shakes my whole soul—
I know not for how long,
nor to what end I may come—
Bitter am I and sad and weary,
it seems, unto death—
Evil spirit, truly bad—
And my David is old.
He stopped playing ages ago –
And my David—even though mine
bears a different name—was too ruddy
and with beautiful eyes.
He too was akin to a king,
and accomplished marvels
striking and strumming.
Now he is old.
His lids are heavy, and at all times
half down, like curtains ready
for the show’s close.
His eyes watching the television
are extinct, and his hand, once so skilled
with the bow, now clutches the remote-control.
He is changing channels, one by one,
in search of a parking-spot, someplace
where perhaps he’ll finally be able to rest
from all the wars—
but finds none.
Also, no bits are left of footage
from the other regal, glorified
personage.
Frenzied in the evil spirit’s grip, I visualize
once again David’s harp—that
evil spirits’ chaser, about which so much noise
was made—and wonder,
for the thousandth time around,
at the secret of its healing sound—
And bitter am I and sad and weary,
it seems, unto death—
And my David is old and full of days,
and comes in the nights
no more—
Translated from the Hebrew by the author, from her poem-collection
Juniper Songs (Shirey Arar), Israel:
"Carmel Publishing House," 2000.
For information about the author, see her internet site: www.renalee.net
Midstream — November/December 2005
Zoo Keeper’s View
(From “Views on Eden”)
The snake ought to have been in a cage.
Being dangerous, it shouldn’t be allowed to roam about,
spreading its poison. Is paradise for everyone?
Did God perhaps wish to let every creature have a taste of it,
even when in hell? (Which in turn renders hell all the more hellish?)
Or else: God knew that if Eden’s relish would be exclusively a right
of the righteous, the place would become like some motel down the road,
and down on its luck, posting a large sign for all to see: “Vacancy!”
Besides, an attorney for the snake could have struck accord
arguing no previous criminal record, begging for pardon. That is,
if attorneys were permitted at all into that heavenly garden.
Had the snake been fenced in, all of us outcasts would probably be
still enjoying Eden. Compared with the countless laws restraining us today,
wouldn’t it be easy to obey a single decree, namely,
abstain from the fruit of a certain tree?
Alas! Maybe this only proves that liberty for all was destined for demise
even in paradise. For one’s freedom is bound to infringe on another’s.
Be it man or beast, there are always “the others” —
I tend the animals locked up at the zoo. I watch them running,
lost in the confined stretch, eyes clouded with memories of space.
The staring people outside are perfectly free to move it would seem.
Yet, each one of them too is prisoner of a secret jail within.
"Modern Age" Spring 2005, Vol. 47, No.2
(Nisionot Ledamot Tzura)
When still a child
he envisioned God in the kindergarten teacher
whose wish would declare whether to punish
or spare.
Then, in the schoolmaster
with his ever open book and inscribing hand.
An adult, already versed in pain,
he viewed God as Atlas, a sort of porter
who bears the heavy load of suffering
in the world.
Flooded with trouble, by tidal waves
crushed, all images were smashed,
in his dimmed eyes-
Weary of all things beyond reach,
in the evening's ashes, his search persisted
for embers of that which existed.
Suddenly,
in a desert of muteness, the whisper of silence
caught his ear, and a great joy took hold of him.
For he recalled the splendorous garden where
he had been, long before kindergarten,
and knew:
The awesome gardener strolling that garden
in the cool of day,
whose kingdom ruled the universe,
was no other than
his father.
Translated from Hebrew by the author, from her poetry collection,
Past Meridian (Shenot Tzohoraim), 1980, Israel: Reshafim Publishing House.
Midstream - May/June 2004
Like their parents
children of Adam and Eve
pursue their pleasures
heedless of any prohibition.
When it comes to studies
they'll take any fruit
rather than a book.
The knowledge
they may finally gain
will always remain
only a taste:
Never filling the hunger
yet enough to expose
their nakedness
and shame.
Midstream -November/December 2003
A gain I was beguiled by the Jerusalem market. Led in the narrow, crooked streets,
through arched openings with their ever-frowning brows.
Again I was captivated by ivory smiles, drowned in spices and incense,
daggered by hundreds of eyes.
Again I was shot by an accidental camera, forced to partake in some strange life,
a mere piece of its intricate jigsaw puzzle:
An old Arab on a low stool sucking on a water pipe, people bargaining in a store,
their fingers silently tell the story.
Mezuzas, Magen-Davids, Crosses on chains.
Muslim-beads to be counted in the secrecy of a pocket.
the Old Testament. The New Testament.
In silver-cover. In olive-wood.
" How much does it cost?" " How much will you take?"
Israeli girls in short skirts, Arab peasant women
in long embroidered dresses, Americans in funny hats,
Arabs in Keffiyehs…..
Jerusalem the old. Jerusalem the new.
"What is the price of this?" "How much will you pay?"
Once again I was mistaken for a tourist.
Even by myself.
Midstream - February /March 2003
I am the rose plucked of the Sharon, the lily picked of the valley.
Born under the sign of Pisces, my life's map consists mostly of oceans,
and all the time I'm trying to bridge between land to land. My efforts never cease.
Constantly on the go, towards the changing horizon, the forever distant.
I stick out finders to scratch its sunset eyes and break my nails.
Next year in Jerusalem, next year in Jerusalem,
The hills of palpitation, the valleys of drained desires,
the monuments of armored vehicles, blood-drenched,
on the way-
In the shape of my country, I am made of streams and deserts, cities and fields,
and many different people. Her soil is my flesh, and wherever I may be,
my life depends on breathing her air.
I am her split image.
Similarly to her Jordan River, controversy runs me through and through.
Like my country, I too practice the art of living without peace.
Midstream - Nov./Dec. 2002
To Be Like Mmoss...
sparkling over old stones
between dust and dust,
making a living wherever a chance,
a whisper of hidden water.
Though
with connections
among some mighty trees-
such as the Cedar of Lebanon
to call one by name-
it lays no claim to fame
and keeps its profile low.
Content in being reduced
to almost nothing
with nothing left to lose,
and every gain
considered vain,
a mere excess,
it is happy to express
itself in a concentrated green
core of existence.
Glancing, dancing, at every comer,
like a child in bliss
never growing up-
Voices Israel 2001, Vol. 28
I too had once an albatross dream flying me
higher and higher. I don't know how or why
it vanished in an evening smoke
leaving me prey to a world of grey.
Twilight is but a short suspense followed
by unmitigated blackness.
No more can I tell the shadows
cast ill night's mold.
My sleep country is bleak and barren.
Should a dream stray there on the way,
it could only be one as heavy and sad
as this ashen elephant,
who crazy with loneliness,
never stops fanning its ears
as if ill a dim recollection of some distant flight.
I too had once an albatross dream flying me
higher and higher .
Voices Israel 2001, Vol. 28
Great expectations? No more.
Even those cut to size
fail to materialize,
Leftovers of yesterday's hope
you heat up again and again
on the low burner,
watching how the pale-blue fire
barely catches its breath.
You're choking. ..
unable to swallow the fruit
of forbidden desire.
Chained to daily tasks,
a prisoner of minutes filled with minutiae,
you're held accountable
for each and every lousy act,
even ever-so-slight
an oversight-
The only one off the hook
is the telephone-
Voices Israel 2000, Vol. 27
Always thought
"Shouldn't have had
that surgery .
Would have perhaps
agreed to pay
an arm and a leg
but certainly not a rib! II
This shows what
can happen to a man
who sleeps
at the wrong place
in the wrong time.
Sinking into a dream
with hope
of reversing the deal
1 always wake
with that same ache
inside me
and a wife
beside me -
"SHOFAR", Vo1. 5, No.6, Summer 1987
As if I had any say
in the matter.
If you feel cheated
put the blame on God, man.
Surely I, too,
would've preferred it
if you had no bone
to pick.
Often I wonder:
wasn't there dust enough
for the two of us?
In my opinion, as the world's
First Lady
I should have come
before Adam
to begin with -
But then, maybe God
didn't want it to look
too much the natural way?
"SHOFAR", Vol. 5, No.6. Summer 1987
when Moses saw the burning bush
he knew the miracle wasn't in the bush but in the fire.
Others may regard it
as one more technical achievement: a fireproof bush.
Embarking on a shopping‑spree they're still looking for
a bargain.
When Moses heard the voice
addressing him from the flames he was first bushed
then fired‑up,
and ablaze like the bush
he too wasn't consumed
as his soul reached consummation.
Others are being consumed by the minute,
burned out
though never on fire.
In search of proofs
in all directions,
they keep on going beating about the bush
“SHOFAR”, Vol. 5, No. 6, Summer 1987
Snake's Angle
It takes a snake
to have that spiteful desire
to live
though so low
though so loathed.
Only a rope with a sense of direction
governed by will.
Crawling through life's desert
clinging to earth
licking the dust
off her feet.
Yet he too must have had hope
flying him in blue bliss.
And a painful memory -
which he tries to doze-off
in the hot noon sun -
when his wings were shattered
into countless small scales
his blood turned cold
and he became enslaved
as carrier of poison.
"SHOFAR", Vol. 5, No.6, Summer 1987
Too fast and fast asleep
your knee is digging in my hip
your elbow stabs my heart.
I am as wide awake as pain.
Rage subdued by mountain sadness.
Clouds of shadows over our bed.
Far in the forests of night
sleep hides from me.
My eyes are open like a question.
"BITTERROT", Vol. XIX, No.76, Summer, 1981
miller's pond poetry magazine, vol.12 issue 2, spring 2009
http://www.millerspondpoetry.com/index.php/issues/index.php?page=vol12-2web
And the snake was
talking to Eve
in his forked tongue,
hissing into her ears
sweet words like
how sweet she was-s
and how he wished
to s-swallow her all up.
"Come-on" he said,
"I'll give you a taste
of real Eden."
His body shot as an arrow
in the direction
of the darkest tree,
and she darted -
Long hours they spent there
the two, on their plot,
perspiring, conspiring,
as if rehearsing
overplaying
some future scene.
And all that time
Adam was
busy busy busy
dressing and keeping the garden
for God.
VOICES WITHIN THE ARC (An anthology of modern Jewish
poetry,
compilers H. Schwartz & A. Rudolf), AVON BOOKS, 1980.
Trees -
rushing, dashing with me
at the car's window.
And what a glorious day, I swear!
The beaten gold of an Indian summer.
Every twig -a bonfire of sun.
Every leaflet -dripping with light's wine.
Houses dance on tiptoe in the blue,
and roads open onto
more and more
trees -
They jump into my heart upside down,
forsaking their roots
in mountains of sky.
Already in my veins their foliage streams:
cascades of blood and fire
like the gush of song.
From now on they'll travel with me
always.
Till the end of summers.
Till smoke rises
from evening's chimneys
and from the edge of a closing lid
a last wish will fall -
"PULP", Vol. 4, No. 1, 1978
My skin has spread itself too thin
running allover me
all at once.
It is easily bruised
and hard to heal.
And it fails to conceal
even those blue veins
that keep peeping at me
as perpetual reminders
of some violent blow
inflicted a long time ago
perhaps the minute I was born.
To no avail
have I tried to toughen it
with different prescriptions
or to grow another layer for protection.
Mine is a white and sheer
and excessively skinny-skin.
And frankly,
if not for its ability
to record your touch, my love,
I doubt its being worth saving.
"PULP", Vol.3, No.1, 1977
http://tajmahalreview.com/taj15.htm June 2009
All their angles
they have lost.
Eternal friction
of sea and sand.
Hybrids
of water and land.
And even in form
they are something between
a drop
and a stone -
Does it mean they conform?
"BITTERROOT", Vol. XVI, No. 60/61 Summer/Autumn, 1977
"Getting Something Read" Jan.26, 2009
on the shore of a summer evening,
waves were kissing the salty sand
parting in multitudes of tongues,
sun was tiptoeing down the scale
careful to keep her head above water,
sky went on changing moods of blue,
and a single bird was getting smaller I
and smaller the higher she flew I
till she turned into a grain -
then heaven took her in and shut the door.
WISPERS OF THE UNCHAINED HEART
An anthology of poetry,
compilers & editors, S. St. BUTTACI & S. GERSTLE), NJ., 1977.
tigers are lying in blue water
lions are drowsing in silent sands
their manes well combed,
leopards spotted among green trees
are making eyes at me.
I know I have only to touch a button
to turn on, then -glowing in heat -
the jungle will be
all over me.
"PULP", Vol. 3, No.213, 1977
The Last Minutes of the Sea-Fish
On the terra firma of my kitchen-counter
he is dying drying up.
His fins, still trying to propel, are meeting with thin air:
A quixotic fight with something that isn't there.
Sweating in a last effort
he is already blue about the gills.
His mouth an outlined lost bubble.
His glassy eyes two tears solidified.
Shipwrecked memories are sunken
in the pit of his mind
of splendorous deep-water colors
their luster gone on soiled earth's surface,
of agile figures coming to a standstill.
No longer can he hear the music of silence
in his shell-shaped ears,
nor remember the life of small scale
down below the salt
amongst sharks and whales and other mighty creatures,
the cold darkness, the troubled ripples, the occasional
shuddering undercurrents,
or his secret proud joy
in being able to catch a taste of ocean
with every single breath.
"Poet Lore", Vol. 72, No.3, Fall, 1977
LanguageandCulture.net Poetry Gallery Summer/Fall2009
http://www.languageandculture.net/poem_lee-5.html
Even I may confess
it's become quite a mess.
In the beginning it was fun:
those two naked fools playing around innocently,
like a movie that starts right out
with a happy ending.
After all, God too
has a right
to some light entertainment
in this endless blue,
among all these angels
flying back and forth,
forever doing His will.
All I wanted was
just a touch of disobedience
to make things a little less tedious
but nothing, nothing, oh nothing like this.
PRESENT TENSE, Vol. 4, No.4, Summer, 1977