Like it or not, each place holds a memory
I may not have played on these streets
But cemented beneath the building lamplights is my first real kiss--
Israeli-flavored, textured like tabouleh--
These shuttered storefront windows are not my version of Brooklyn at nighttime
But I know what it is to turn this dark corner coming home--
Tired from dancing, completely alone--
This rooftop terrace is not mine, not where I crafted a hip adolescence
But it is where I built bases for potluck communities--
Here my love of human connection was crafted, then bourne.
My current apartment is still not really mine--
Belonging, as it does, to the landlords creaking the floorboards above me, their parrot, and their cat--
But it is where boys first slept over, where first I was marked by someone
Leaving their toothbrush, their territorial imprint behind.
I guess I'm saying--
We don't choose which memories get locked in where,
Nor have we any say when they happen or why
We can choose to rage against the imperfection of their sense of timing or location-
As I so often do-
Or we step onto a street of acceptance that these are our Lives, and our experiences
Will happen at their will, where they will, when they will,
And despite their imperfections, we are along for the ride.

Come back, somebody who loves me
Come back and sing me a song
Come back, somebody who holds me
Come back and carry me home
Come back, somebody who needs me
I can't believe I'm alone.

For the smallest lick of kindness
I'll forgive ******
I'll move mountains, lay my belly flat down on the ground, ******* up **** syrup, frolicking in ****.
For your smallest act of kindness,
I'll strip naked
Let you touch my body and pretend I love you
Just please God hold me through the darkest night.
Look at me with kindness,
And I'll clothe you, take you to my home
Feed you all my hard-earned food and shove second helpings on your plate.
For a little bit of kindness,
For the one who stitches back together my shredded sanity
I'd do it all, God, let me do it all.

For my mother's mother
All my clothes are patched with Soviet things.
Needles, hardy and rough, dinosaurs withstanding time
Spools of thread that were my grandmother's,
Brought over in a special sewing box with clasps on the top and sides,
Skin-colored and worn, cracked open to reveal
Spikes to hang thread on, like the intimate insides of a body
An ancient body, creased like grandmother's hands.

For my father's mother, who taught me to embroider*
My father's mother taught me to sew
Taught me to bring life to imagination, to calm my raw nerves
With the ancient language passed down from the war and her grandmother
The ancient language that lets our silences speak,
Jump off the cloth,
Embed permanently in the spaces between woven thread.
If it unravels, it may be mended for as long as we are alive,
Unless we pass it on to our daughters, our sons, and on and on, and on...

I am the odds and ends of the things/lives I collect from others
The last blank pages of your notebook finally filled
With unrelated topics, phrases, words, precious only to me
I am the afterthought, the forgotten things
I save bits and pieces of books lives torn pages out of magazines, the original hoarder
I am the value in the stuff strangers left behind
Empty shampoo bottles, still good for one more use
The last three bits of candy no one wanted
I am commitments made and lost
To maintain upkeep, to always BE THERE
I am the plain fare of your first apartment
Committed to SmartHealth, rich in none
I hide in pseudonyms and basement apartments
Lurking in shadows so darkly private that
Should you even suspect my inner world exists
I'd cut you off, shut the door in your face, asking, pleading
For you Not to Exist.

Why do people say/Don't listen to the devil on your shoulder(?)
He is your true self, the Self beneath the Iceberg.
The one who is your evolution/your most basic biological connection.
The Angel, your righteous self, is not the priggish, stick-in-the-mud Comparison.
But perhaps the Devil was made for more than just the suggestion/excuse for Temptation.
Perhaps he is the You of Primal Intent/Your innate ancestor,
your Wild Self.
The animal in us is the Feelings/the Emotions/the Matter
over Mind.
Maybe this poem is an excuse.
Uncontrollable urges, a reason to let go/ and All that.
Or maybe,
When you're #toosmartforyourowngood,
The fork-tongued Devil's exactly who you need.

That's the thing about Hero
You hope he'll take command of any situation
even if he just happens to be a
Bystander cloaked in the Right Time and
Circumstance.