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Aug 2016 · 7.1k
Veterans Day
JGuberman Aug 2016
The young seeds unsown
buried beneath
long forgotten granite reasons
a waste of stone
and otherwise arable soil
which now lies fallow and barren
like the ancient womb
from which they were given way
unsafely into the world
of parks and laughter
of tears and monumental alibis
for another's selfish desire
to raise a flag upon a distant hill
and bury beneath it
like supporting struts
the very bones of our future.
after Academy Hill, Stratford
Aug 2016 · 5.7k
Yom Ha-Shoah 5750
JGuberman Aug 2016
Tell me mother
as you kiss your baby
that no one died today,
that no one was a martyr
or a hero,
and that all who now sleep will awake,
and that the sirens that now sound
will be the only death recorded,
and that the drivers without cars,
and the cars without drivers,
will each find a partner
for as long as they need,
like the Palm Doves in the park.

Tell me mother,
that as long as you
love your baby
all mothers will love theirs
and no mother will again mourn
the foreheads without a kiss
and the kiss that has no forehead
to receive it.
written on a bus in Herzliya, Israel 22 April 1990 (Holocaust Memorial Day).  On this day air raid sirens ring out across Israel at which point all traffic comes to a halt for a couple minutes. Drivers exit and stand next to their cars and pedestrians stop in their tracks and stand at attention while the sirens wail.

It should be noted that this poem had originally been written as a piece for Holocaust Memorial Day, though as the 20th Century bled into the 21st, it is clear that mothers and children all over our world are suffering untold miseries be they refugees escaping tyranny or victims of civil strife or war. This therefore is dedicated to all mothers and children.
Aug 2016 · 919
Fragment
JGuberman Aug 2016
Between the songs of the Nighthawk
and the Mourning Dove
the sound of apples beneath us
and sirens rushing  between
life and death,
we lay together in the darkness
like two blind people reading love poetry.
JGuberman Aug 2016
I expect the Messiah
and though he is tarrying,
I still believe----
But when I am expected,
I am never late,
and thus there are those
who have faith in me.
Aug 2016 · 2.9k
Lilith
JGuberman Aug 2016
The flower of womanhood.

You are like no flower,
you are a snake.

A cobra
with your head *****,

ready to strike.
And stricken was I.

The apple of my eye.

Out of reach,
bittersweet

Like the honey-apple
I've never tasted.

But when in reach
you are still no joy,

for your taste is forbidden,
and cast from the Garden

was I.
Aug 2016 · 1.8k
A Psalm of En Gedi
JGuberman Aug 2016
She said a prayer
to which I was not an answer
and yet I burned
until I burned myself out
like a candle on Shabbat.

And the words of her prayer ceased
and her lips were still
like the surface of the salt sea,
and yet I still burn
like a wound exposed below
the surface.

And the words of her prayer
went unanswered
like the cries of my martyred dead
and yet I still burn
like the silence of a candle remembering them.
En Gedi, Israel 1987
Aug 2016 · 899
The Sacred & The Profane
JGuberman Aug 2016
after Yona Wallach (1944-1985)


Let's have it!
I came for the show!
Strip the Torah
to its essence
where not one word can hide
caress it with your Yad
singing in a lovers voice
an ancient burlesque
and when it's done and dressed again
parade it dancing through the congregation
a fitting encore
to a fine performance
as we almost fall over each other
to touch it
slipping spiritual dollars into its belt
the temperatures rising
like a finished prayer
that even makes the Malachim sweat
in their heavenly heights.
Yona Wallach was an Israeli poet known for her suggestive and sometimes explicit work that was often both sacred and profane.

Yad is the pointer used to read from the Torah

Malachim are "angels".
Aug 2016 · 369
Another
JGuberman Aug 2016
Another woman
gave me the gloves
of another man
and I now take shelter
in these gloves,
and in the hands
of a different woman.

And I think about that man
and the insanity
which drove him
to abandon his gloves,
and I think about
that woman
and the sanity
that drove me from her,
and I think about my hands
in their warmth,
and about that woman
without me or the gloves,
and I think about that man
with his hands in his pockets.
Aug 2016 · 1.1k
Av-rahim
JGuberman Aug 2016
The soil covers your bare feet in a powdery gray dust
like you've walked through an old fireplace that hasn't been cleaned
in the days since the last sacrifice.

There's enough wood to keep us warm through the coldest winter
or burn heretics to any cold heart's content.
This land is full of burnt offerings
and lucky rams
where it doesn't even take the word of god to sacrifice your child
just the word of man,
imperfect as the path you walk back from alone.
Av-Rahim is a conflation of the Hebrew beginning of the name of Abraham and the Arabic ending of the same name.

— The End —