Skin deep in her cold green sea,
a dark and gnarled sky above.
On the horizon a sign reads:
She believes in angels, but she can't believe in love.

Insane in her reverie, wings sewn cross stitch
all down the spine of her back,
rattling panes that the winds blow
are just a reminder of all that she lack.

Saw teeth across metal, this is music to her ear,
the shriek of a tea kettle brings insolent childhood fear.
Rude eyes shout; forget the devil, he has no bite.
She knows better though, she won't go down without a fight.

Her attempts to to speak of the things she has heard
are the sounds of the cat who has sprung on the bird.
To spread her wings is to spread her legs
and embrace to power the darkness has made.

Oh, the suffering of heart ache after heart's ache,
while pulling the wings off of flies.
She can make you laugh, she's pretty smart hey,
but it isn't the same as being wise.

Every bit of her life, it occurs to her.
Yes it does, it just occurs.
Now is that being selfish or just being blind,
if fooling people well is her way to unwind.


end


© copyright 2005

I turn and I turn
Life's sweet colours spinning past
Faster and slower
Around and around I go
Full of all and full of awe

He sendeth sun, he sendeth shower,
Alike they're needful for the flower:
And joys and tears alike are sent
To give the soul fit nourishment.
As comes to me or cloud or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done!
Can loving children e'er reprove
With murmurs whom they trust and love?
Creator! I would ever be
A trusting, loving child to thee:
As comes to me or cloud or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done!
Oh, ne'er will I at life repine:
Enough that thou hast made it mine.
When falls the shadow cold of death
I yet will sing, with parting breath,
As comes to me or shade or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done!

"What kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me.
I'm a person with a complex plumbing of the soul,
Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system
Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,
But with an old body from ancient times
And with a God even older than my body.
I'm a person for the surface of the earth.
Low places, caves and wells
Frighten me. Mountain peaks
And tall buildings scare me.
I'm not like an inserted fork,
Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.

I'm not flat and sly
Like a spatula creeping up from below.
At most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle
Mashing good and bad together
For a little taste
And a little fragrance.

Arrows do not direct me. I conduct
My business carefully and quietly
Like a long will that began to be written
The moment I was born.

s Now I stand at the side of the street
Weary, leaning on a parking meter.
I can stand here for nothing, free.

I'm not a car, I'm a person,
A man-god, a god-man
Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah.

When the fire grabbed his body, it didn't happen by degrees.
There was no burst of heat before,
or giant wave of smothering smoke
and the feeling of a spare room one wants to escape to.
The fire held him at once
—there are no metaphors for this—
it peeled off his clothes
cleaved to his flesh.
The skin nerves were the first to be touched.
The hair was consumed.
"God! They are burning!" he shouted.
And that is all he could do in self-defense.
The flesh was already burning between the shack's boards
that fed the fire in the first stage.
There was already no consciousness in him.
The fire burning his flesh
numbed his sense of future
and the memories of his family
and he had no more ties to his childhood
and he didn't ask for revenge, salvation,
or to see the dawn of the next day.
He just wanted to stop burning.
But his body supported the conflagration
and he was as if bound and fettered,
and of that too he did not think.
And he continued to burn by the power of his body
made of hair and wax and tendons.
And he burned a long time.
And from his throat inhuman voices issued
for many of his human functions had already ceased,
except for the pain the nerves transmitted
in electric impulses
to the pain center in the brain,
and that didn't last longer than a day.
And it was good that his soul was freed that day
because he deserved to rest.



Translated from the original Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut.

TWO loves had I. Now both are dead,
And both are marked by tombstones white.
The one stands in the churchyard near,
The other hid from mortal sight.

The name on one all men may read,        
And learn who lies beneath the stone;
The other name is written where
No eyes can read it but my own.

On one I plant a living flower,
And cherish it with loving hands;      
I shun the single withered leaf
That tells me where the other stands.

To that white tombstone on the hill
In summer days I often go;
From this white stone that nearer lies
I turn me with unuttered woe.

O God, I pray, if love must die,
And make no more of life a part,
Let witness be where all can see,
And not within a living heart.

Whether shaken from scalps of clouds or sewn from water and chill,
These drops of frost have allowed for thoughts frozen in me still.
Clipped in form unlike the others, these bits of ice are shaven off the sky
And fall in suit only to the current with which it flies.

Yet these spurs, however unique or golden in design
Lose their beauty in a moment’s time.
Fluttering alone, they are constructed shards of glass
But among the thousands the first is as good as the last.

Pluck one out, hold it before your face
And peer at it close to admire the shape
Watch as its sparkle sputters and fades
And melts away without a trace.
Just so, the flakes of time in a close way do fall
And I, grasping one out to admire cannot hope to see them all.

hello Edvard.  i have no umbrellas for your armaments .
only your conspiracy and the last *******, ink dark thinking.
bright charlatans engrossed in their glib de menthe.
no harm in it.
only your heresy is more beautiful than blinking. wink dark slinking -
into frightful. hooligan moons blast evening. again, we miss.
no heart in it.