with a hole in my heart
I have to take care
not to let all the love spill out
desiccating a young heart before its time,
even if borrowed and not returned before it's due
whenever that will be.

don't tell life's librarian
even if it's overdue
there are things I'd still like to see
places I'd still like to go
so I don't feel like I'm waiting for the hangman
to finish his merit badge for one handed knot tying
which will take long enough
if not forever, I hope.

though stumbling up the gallows steps
I will have been to several mountain tops
and will have seen several lands of promise
and though I will not make it elsewhere with you
you've filled the hole in my heart
long enough
for me to get this far
though it's never far enough.

To see the light of memory
reduced
to but a wisp of smoke
to hear the burning candle
at the end of its wick
extinguish itself in a hiss,
is to experience for but a moment
ancient death performing its work anew.

"I cannot see, I cannot see!"
says the soul of its diminishing
diminished light.
"Illuminate me, O God,
make me to shine like the light
in a child's eyes,
allow me to walk again
along the edge of creeping darkness,
like a carefree youth
no longer afraid of the dark.
But I'm still afraid, Oh so afraid
that if you close my eyes this once
I will not return to burn with sight again
for the fire that now fades
and hisses
is but ancient death performing its work
anew
rendering a disserve to my being
by reducing the light of memory
in the hearts of each succeeding generation."

The views from Qing Xiu Shan are very nice
and I am feeling better than I did this morning
the Yong River winds through green fields
the breeze fills my lungs
my thoughts rustle like bamboo leaves
a southern tranquility rises in the distance
covered by the opaque morning
this is what my mind's eye sees
as I rock my little girl to sleep
kissing the forehead
that will never be without a kiss
until my lips are still
like the peaceful day we yearn for

Upon seeing the new dining room chair;
that is the one reserved for me,
I am seized by a lordly desire
to one day sell it
so that later no one would say
"see, that was his chair"
or "these scratches and stains, are from
a time before,
this emptiness, from a time after."
I want it to be sold or
given away, before it's an alteh zach
or before I'm an a.k.
afraid that someday someone will say
"all he does is sit and stare all day....
Nebech."

Let us sleep
like the staircase
that once led up to the Temple Mount
no longer able to carry pious feet to prayer,
but the well experienced cracks
over which they once walked
expose the heavy burden
of well worn memories
under which we now slumber.

Sunrise from Masada.
The view from the casemate wall
of Silva's camp below.
Shadowy ghosts
are cast and scattered
and given voice as the wind
shouts through the buildings ruins
L'-he-rut Zi-yon
and there is no reply.
Only the songs of the Tristramit
who mimic the voices
of every child martyred here, singing:
*Shalom al Ziyon, Shalom al Ziyon"
and there is no reply,
only the dreams of the interrupted
and the disturbed peace
of excavated ruins.

There isn't much left.
That's the way it is sometimes.
You plan and plan
for the day
when there won't be any,
and yet you're still surprised
when there isn't much left
in the end.

My days are not like seven fat cows
or seven skinny ones.
My days are like veal.
They're slaughtered young,
and at night I feast upon them.

Some nights I can sleep contentedly afterwards..
And others,
I lay awake unable to dream at all.

Guilt keeps me awake.
I've become a kosher butcher of time!
Often my own.

That's the way it is sometimes.
There isn't much left.
So I plan and plan
trying to postpone the day
when there won't be any.

I saw a portrait of Uri Zvi Greenberg,
it showed an older man
perhaps twice my age,
with no recognizable poetic traits in his face,
perhaps had they shown a young man
it would've been different?

I saw a portrait of Miklos Radnoti
he died as a young man,
with no recognizable poetic traits in his face,
and I have nearly lived his full life,
perhaps if they had shown a child
it would've been different?

I saw a portrait of Anne Frank
whom all the world knows.
I am twice her age,
it's not different
it's worse
peace comes regardless of age
it begins for the living
at the expense of the dead.

I saw a portrait from when I was a child,
like the opening lines of
the epic poem I am becoming,
I will not be a national treasure
like the Kalevala
or Shahnameh
I will be immortalized
like all the unnamed citizens
of Uruk
remembered merely because they lived there,
whose names are unknown
like those
who did not leave a diary,
or a notebook of poems,
and like sheep to the slaughter
did not live to my time to read them.