My Nebbish

Well, said I, it’s right as rain
As snow fell down the window pane
“And almost spring,” the Reinbear said
As he rolled and tumbled out of bed.

I think you’re wrong or quite mistaken
I’m sure I would remember that
If spring were here, then I would cheer!
And cry “Hooray!” and be quite gay.

“It’s not too late to do a jig and herald in the woodland sprigs”
And so the Reinbear danced and sang
While snowflakes followed him around.
He did not care if it was cold, or blustery or grey,
He knew that nestled in his heart
Spring was just a little way.
He’d wait for it, for blooms and sun
For all his friends to come and run
Along the river, down the lane
He knew that Spring was when they came.

“I’ll take a nap” the Reinbear said
“And when I wake I know I’ll see
The sun and grass, all green and bright
And spring will be a sheer delight!”

So in December when all was cold
Dreary, dark and dank,
I hurried quietly into bed
And slept and dreamt with Reinbear near
Till snow turned into rivers clear
Of daffodils and crocus blooms
Sparkling in the azure blue.

I Just Want To Kill Myself

Merry Happy Chanukah and Christmas

%- ) (:-)

Alas alack and near and far
i run and trip— the ground is hard
my feet are sore my hands are scraped
my knees are weary
i sorely ache
what good is this, i cannot say
to exercise is such a chore
like scrubbing floors
and kitchen sinks
and even places that sometimes stink.
oh woe and wishful thinking all
a cup of coffee i do recall
is what would please my very soul
instead of feeling oh so small
while mother cleans my cuts and scrapes
you’d think ’twas seven, not 48
or nine or ten, or 52
it doesn’t matter, i feel like two.
so come tomorrow, i’ll try again
to run with grace and ease— count 10!

no dog waiting

I always forget that there is no dog waiting at home. Always. And surprised, each time, then saddened, as my expectations vanish, as the air, or the ghosts of dogs past. What is wrong with me?
He is not here, not the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that…but they all hang around, tempting me to believe in their existence. And why not? How comforting, when the wind howls and the rain hits the roof so hard you keep a lookout for leaks, yes, as if they were here, to protect, to comfort. Each time, each and every time, I steep myself in delusions of comfort, safety, blissful ignorance, when there is none.

After the realization…

So you enter your house, put down your keys, head to the stereo, select a jazz CD, get a drink. Does it matter it’s only 2pm? No. Time and wine are independent of each other. Each time you indulge is a new experiment. The first drink you had when the bottle was brought home was sufficient. The second day, also, one drink was sufficient. After that it increased. Two on the third day, three on the fourth day. Today is the seventh day. Today I believe I have lost all hope of maintaining anything resembling a reasonable intake. Today I am about to finish my third glass. Today I have discarded caring, lost all empathy for myself, lost all reasonable connection to the outside. Today, this moment, I am going downstairs to refill my glass.
Heaven help me.

Mimeographed

I am a copy of myself
Just offer me a cigarette
And though you know I do not smoke
I dare to say I will not choke.

Now this is very odd indeed
I run and run and run with speed
This makes me feel that I am free
For trouble seems to follow me
No matter where or when, you please
I usually begin to bleed.

Make no mistake (perhaps just one)
Mistakes are rarely very fun
Avoid temptation to reply
I say this, but I don’t know why
So if you are inclined to write
I hope to find that you’re polite!

Love Endures

Tell me when autumn comes
For I must leave, you see
Tell me when the first leaf falls
For I must set you free
Tell me when the rose withers on its thorned crown
For when the rose has lost its hue I cannot comfort thee.

I leave though I am pained at thoughts
Of seeing you no more
I leave though grieved I am at circumstances
That carry me off shore.

Oh, tell me now, before I go
That you still love me so
Tell me, quick, as winter nears
That your love shall endure.

Flesh to Earth

#1
I weep for one who cannot hear
But nonetheless I weep
The tears seep through my hardened heart
Into my swollen breast
Shattering my mind apart
That I may still find rest.

Soldier, ride from battle, ride
Broken mind and soul
Ride until the heavens part
And swallow, one and all.

Weep, weep, weep and then
Turn into the wind
Till rain and tears are one, my love
And flesh to earth becomes.

#2
Loneliness dissolves to tears
Sickness eats my heart
Eyes that sorrow blinds
And the world slips apart.

In death are we not made whole?
For who can say this is not so
Can testify to life beyond
If there be one, then let us go
If there be none, let the dead rest
Free of pain and sorrow’s weariness.

Lament not the passing
Yours draws nearer each hour.

#3
Nearer is mine
So near your asking holds it
Mine, trivial to the world around
Yet
I would dissolve this union of flesh to bone
Could I hold to my resolve
But
Left with promises unfulfilled
Life continues
So seemingly even
Smiles correct
Heart drawn and quartered

Oh, had you not asked!

I Saw It On The News

It’s 5°

I start to freeze–

December always makes me sneeze.

My body shakes from nose to knees

And I begin to cough and wheeze.

Then January starts the year

With Polar Bears in bathing shorts

Madly running on the beach,

Diving into waters deep.

Now blizzard warnings warp my mind–

You better not delay.

Winds will howl all through the night

To drive the snow away

And bury cars in six-foot drifts

While all you do is watch and wait.

So open up your pantry doors

And see what lies inside.

Your larder looks a bit up-tight

It hasn’t food to last the night–

It’s just a case of fight or flight!

Get going while there still is light

Subway Love

To Massi

problems and worries
one on the other
way too serious
why do I bother
so reading is better
than writing right now
but thanks for inquiring
I’ll try a lot harder.

You Light Up…

oh my, look at me light up!

Parked Cars in NYC

No spaces found. You’d think
cars would be anathema in this town
of subways running 24/7, and car thieves prowling round
Mercedes lining every street
BMWs looking oh so neat.
You’d think they’d smarten up,
but not in this town.
In this town they run around, cell phones held out,
oblivious to sounds
of footsteps, and I wonder who will lose
tonight.
Shattered glass tells tales of thieves
and late-night news weaves stories of grief–
cellphones ripped from unsuspecting heads.
New Yorkers.
Stupid, for growing up on these streets, nothing’s ever left to chance.
You know better living here.
Tuck your jewelry in your blouse, turn your rings around. And sneakers.
Can’t outrun the bad guys in heels.
So jack my car–I have insurance.

weather

Snow, sleet, rain and wind–
tonight is New York City’s time of umbrage
and discontent, whipping through streets,
screaming stormy weather in its path,
thunderous winter loosing electricity from her skies.
Streets slick, people wearied from the pounding snow
slow their steps, lest they fall–
this night creeps on till morning light
brings promises of sunny skies.

Snow is black in this city of endless life,
as cars roll by, buses filled with diesel fuel,
trains and dogs and people crushing it to hardened masses
the pristine flakes, now turned into a city’s detritus.
Images of white are cast in the mind
or painted apartment walls, with childhood memories lost in dreams.
The city’s snow has always been black.

A century before
when coal belched forth and sooted streets enveloped her
people, suffocating all. Black then
black now.

Our city was never white
once the white man stepped on shore,
the Dutch first to claim the tip and strike her into streets of mud and foulness
from her bowels released.
Count plagues and fever many,
as sewage and garbage, human waste and trash polluted waterways,
illness felled the poor, the rich fared better but not more so
that all succumbed to dysentery’s toll,
and 3,500 die of cholera 200 years later
while city bankers run money instead of water
through New York’s streets.

Perhaps snow is white in New England,
or in the land of Robert Frost,
or in Wyoming or Ohio,
but not here.
City dirt covers streets and parks alike,
there is no remedy,
so many in so little space continues unabated the grayness
cast from sky to street.
Even a summer’s heat bears no brilliance.
So odd that sometimes sky blue bears radiance unforeseen
as in that day more than a decade past
when death in contrast made a city gray and black as night.

David Bowie Revisited

I fell down
It wasn’t far
But in that distance life shot past
with indeterminate speed
I was the moon, falling,
David Bowie gliding to earth
Lost in a desert
Alien to myself as to all around
I grabbed a midnight Pan Am and headed to New York,
Landed in Idlewild,
Memories not yours.
You, the simple one I used to be,
After all the searching
Found life was only what I needed.
Shadows crawled out from the walls,
Dreams of freedom being mine
As you fell into cracks and crevices so small
That hopes of retrieving you were insane.

Sentenced: The NYTimes: January 22, 2013

103 years, Judge Ingram said,
as Weberman lowered his head,
charged with crimes of acting out,
found guilty, on 59 counts,
child sexual abuse, towards a 12 year-old girl.
His religion could not excuse,
his heinous acts, his moral turpitude,
an unlicensed therapist upon an unwitting soul.

“I would cry until the tears went dry,”
the victim sighed with head held high.
Now 18, married, she moved away,
her home in another place to stay,
for society still perverts the crime
to wrong the woman victimized.

Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes got it right,
wresting power from the powerful,
letting law see the light,
so victims will know their voices are heard
and justice once more rises at dawn,
to challenge the dark, one day at a time.

Subway in NYC

The trains pass, crowded with humanity,
a woman, crushed against riders,
with hair askew and packages in hand,
grabs hold the car’s gleaming pole,
struggling for space
as a myriad of hands,
unrelenting, begrudge her safety.
Out the window more trains pass,
each bears burdens of day’s woes,
work undone, promises broken,
jobs lost, some won,
though weariness surfaces in all–
the city takes its toll.
The woman exits, with little relief,
her evening a reflection of her day,
as cook and clean fill the hours,
till slumber calls
and sweet caresses of dreams obscure the city’s madding screams.

That doggie in the crèche…

NYC–St. Patrick’s Cathedral–interior–crèche with dog–looks like a golden retriever

dog and god, one and the same
you can’t fake what’s in a name
forwards, backwards, it’s the same
dog and god are one name

dark nights, dark dreams

Down, down, and down
down
sewers
black holes with fetid water
the wine of a city
blinded by cheap lights
cheap thrills
too costly to survive
only in dreams.

On clouds
dreams ghost by
the gold ring beckons
horse heads break
ancient wood, brittle and neglected
your forgotten dreams
misunderstood
when horses ran round and round
and laughter was the only sound.

Now grown
decapitated and dethroned
you shuffle back and forth to work
down subway steps
towards black earth
and rats that scurry, finding death
anticipating you, along the way
will find the fall
complimentary.

You casually accept the entry
the underworld so grim
there to find your long-lost kin.

don’t jump…

political issues aside
there are some things I really can’t hide
though finances are rough
not having a dog
is getting real tough
and depressed is a new state of mind

Off the cliff!

obliged to all
my brain dissolves
in New Year’s wine
in champagne’s fine
attributes
in chocolates and delicacies
that palates must attend
to such distress as tongues
and taste without refinement
as we pursue a state of sheer inebriation
without a hint of what the morn shall bring
in pain and torture
as heads collide on pillows softer
than an angel’s hand could lend.
Oh, we are, doubtless, a species of abuse!

ethos

oppressed
exigent days
New York fills me with a haze
of smoke and soot
abides not well
New York borders on the hell
of crass indifference
and yet to tell
it often proves a boon
a source of pride as all collide
and come together, side by side

A New York Nightmare

Sunnyside, so comforting a name
Now can only claim
A place of death,
Another in NYC.

Queens, so regal it proclaims
But harbors those who maim
And kill the innocent of this a city,
Inured to violence
A purple heart of death.

We honor killing, murder, depravity
And toss aside what’s left of our humanity
Replacing it with such insanity
That souls are set adrift.

Deterioration

When I awoke
The day just lay there
Stagnant.

Which dream was real
No hour longer than this day
Under cover though I stay
Tangled mess, my sheets tell the tale
of distress.

Never comfortable
The next awaits
And never arrives.

I wait
When darkness overcomes
To hide has just begun.

Death Tracks in NYC Dec 27

Victims of the city walls
All await a deadly fall
Through sewers, streets and shopping malls
The Subway tracks tell us all
That life is rotten to the core
When we neglect our neighbors call
No jobs, low wages, a scary sight
As politicians continue on
Wreak havoc on so many here
And food a scarce commodity
While rents increase and they rejoice
To those we pay a living wage
As we scurry to our grave.