What keeps me holding onto my old self,
preventing me from casting it into past swells?

Something detested, adored, hymned too,
haunted, cancer ridden, inflamed, grieving

and torn- yet beloved, pulled forward
into an ocean of tomorrow and tomorrow’s

swimming to hope or drowning in hopelessness,
never knowing where my forgiveness exists

or where my identity will be marooned,
my crueler self will  beach

and be rescued or
die in the unlit sun.

The hospital gown they gave me
is the same one with clouds
my mother and friend once wore,
a hand me down filled
with the aura of grief and hope,
of time and death.

My name and date of birth
are the only thing the nurses ask
as I am led to the mold
in a treatment room
filled with a halogen haze
and an all encompassing white-
almost a verisimilitude of heaven-
pulled and pushed to the mean
that is marked in black on my body,
strapped in and slid to the center.

The  mechanical eye
revolves around me three times,
a trinity of hope, despair, life,
as I listen to bagpipes humming around,
the brightness forcing my eyes closed,
the wave tingling as it passes underneath.

I am connected to the past
by the fear of death,
separated through
the hope of cure,
knowing that I won’t
die in the gown of my mother
or with a four inch hole on my back
like my friend.

The eye whirls slowly around
one more time, then stops,
barely ten minutes passing
in an eternity of thoughts.

The nurses offer me curved arms
that lift me up, allow me
to swing my legs over
and touch the floor,
my backside exposed,
as I raise myself up
and walk away, death dates
of loved ones haunting my brain,
seeing only the ashes of clouds
of myself and others around me.

I can’t remember when death
turned moments to memorial,
gifts unfolded to blessings.

The tan slippers of Christmas past
snuggled my mother’s lost toe
so the others never mourned.

Those mules never left her feet,
even on her final nap.
“Bless me Papa,” her last words.

I don’t know if they were lost
or she was buried with them.
I thought they were forever gone.

And then twenty three years on
I gifted my friend some pair
my new wife found on last sale.

She wore them, a sacrament
to  follow from home to ward
bequeathed from last breath

thru the fragile bruise of time,
the visions of Christ near her,  
repeating deliriums

of cold, cold, cold: hot, hot, hot
and I love you, I love yous
until lost in all the moves

from ICU to hospice,
unable to find others,
a new fleshy blanket I

draped around her cold/hot feet,
until it snuggled just so right,  
perfect as a thank you.

Five days after Thanksgiving
she passed away and I took
the cloth home to wash and wear

to find my wife had found it
and regifted what I could
not own to her sleeping soul.

Ay, florecitas
clouds of white
frozen in sugary divine,
little flowers of my soul,
taste of sweet desire
of little boys in
San Juan, Moroves, Ponce,
exiles in Miami and the Bronx
tasting the beauty
of their mother’s youth—

knowing love by the rattling
of small blooms in the big tin,
the maternal hand scooping
pastels of confection perfection,
passions hard creamy diffusion
dusting her, making her
a florecita of love—

until florecitas became the way
they interpreted the sky—
there a lavender snail,
an erupting volcano,
a devouring whirlpool,
a burst of flame
a feeding octopus—

until all became
the florecitas
of their beloveds form:
her lips a strawberry florecita
splitting apart to his
first hesitant probing,
her ******* a pink florecita
waiting for his sweet consumption,
her *** a light brown florecita
gently swirling open
to his tongue’s taste,
*** a fleshy little flower
to be split in
his sweet embrace,
all of her earthy and ****
as a Neruda sonnet—

until all that is left
for themselves,
for my self,
is the fading scents
of all the florecitas
never tasted.

We tell our children not to wander in the woods,
never to stop or enter the cottage with
the peppermint scent and gingerbread façade
for a naked witch is sleeping inside.

Beware the milk weeping from an axe handle outside,
the tingling inside that stretches from heart to toes
that neither sinks nor swims if tied with heavy stones,
the ointment on your back that makes you feel flight.

If you are sickened by the scent of roasting meat
kissing your nostrils, we tell them, do not enter there.
If she gazes at you and you see her reflection in the frosted panes,
hear her voice sweetly echo in the glittering fireflies of night, turn away.

Better to crush her bones to paste and use them to mason your new house
less you close your eyes and she be on top in your dream bed,
her pointed ******* caressing down, her black familiar nearby,
we tell them, never noticing the rancid butter on the neighbor’s sill.

If she smiles and you dream the image of a child inside her,
especially after barren decades of hope, many more watching her
tying knots at the end of your bed, muttering an unknown language,
do not ever let her in, we repeatedly tell them.

If she smiles and you see a frown, cast her out, we tell them.
If she marries you in heart and soul and never gets engaged,
If she weeps at the sight of every child in ambulation,
If she takes on the face of Norma Desmond, she is an evil thing.

If she lives in air, fire, ice and water, sees planets in the day;
Insists on walking when old and frail and fragile with age;
looks intently at every small thing, do not let her hair
touch your cross lest she curse you with an unhappy life.

Check your children’s hair lest there be witch powder there.
Beware their nightmares lest they be witch’s dreams.
They may be be-spelled if they struggle with things
greater than themselves, especially those you believe.

if they have contrary opinions, want to tour strange cities,
plea for mercy for the poor soul exiled on death row,
give a drink to a thirsty man, cry for the forever war,
they are surely bewitched and need to feel the switch.

Watch your children lest they slip the things they want
but can not afford into their gloves and pockets
for they are part of her infernal coven and it is time
to collect them together, find the matches and burn the wood.

I am Jonah in the belly of Leviathan
living only when the beast surfaces,
exchanging liquid grief, heavy air
for the unwanted gasps of new life.

I pray out of this belly for gills
and only the ocean hears my voice,  
It deepens and encompasses me,
its  waves billowing me in absolution.

The beast vomits me out to her caress,
a body of weeds penetrating to my soul.
I dream of sinking, my thoughts fainting,
lungs releasing their corruption.

I relax and the waters reject me.
It refuses me gills knowing
that land creatures were meant
to see only mountains and sky.

It was chanted for five Sabbaths in a row
in the small synagogue with the charred bimah,
ashes staining the tzitzits of the rebbe’s tallit,
as he raised his arms above his head, closed his eyes
and sang the first alaf of seven thousand dabars,
the oral memory passed down six generations,
a psalm for a hundred sabas and savtas,  
abbas and eemas, nursery rhymes for ben and bat,
stopping, receding, picked up again, one by one
from cantor to congregant in a low moan
until all nine hundred thousand silenced voices
of Treblinka sang in the knesset’s bright light.  
    

bimah-  lectern from which the Torah is unscrolled on
tzitzit- the knotted fringes of a Hebrew prayer shawl
tallit- a Hebrew prayer shawl worn by rabbis
alaf- the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet
dabar- Hebrew for word
saba- grandfather
savta- grandmother
abba- father
eema- mother
ben- son
bat- daughter
knesset- the members of a synagogue