Always save the best for last*


He Says:

I hoard,
just in case,
when I get my daily dose of
rainy day needs,
then, for a fresh start,
a cheer me up,
keep new shoes and such
in a closet, gathering dust,
and look them up...

She Says:

no way,
use the best first,
always,
that why I am
always
in my finest,
and why I
put up with you*
and still kiss your
wrongheaded head,
and keep on kickin' your
***-
backwards thinking...

“I cannot be what I ought to be, unless you are what you ought to be, and you cannot be what you ought to be unless I am what I ought to be.”*.    
Martin Luther King



tonight, saw a woman
dance to these words...

body precision pinpoint akimbo shaking,

testifying with every limb,
this be, a sensible truth....
the music of the words,

no music
but the words, uttered in his kingly voice,
that
was the only instrument present,
more than sufficient...


long after, the theater dark,

audience and dancers,

dispatched onto the

New York City dark despairing winter's icing streets,

I am tasting them on my tongue,

out loud as they should be spoke....


not going to essay, meaning plain,

not going diminish their simplicity....


but this I can say,

this will feed my consciousness,

a long time coming....
and I will be
that much
closer
to who
I
ought to be

all about
how your stock of words,
the inventory of what you got,
aged and now marked down on the books,
carried over from the holiday season,
that you, in marriage to life, accumulated,
to whom you have become betrothed

your trade, no can give 'em up,
gotta to maintain their
existence
no matter how bewildering,
gotta to demonstrate
persistence
by taking last year's unsold,
repaint, recombinate, dress 'em up,
post them as all new,
even tho the words used,
pre-existed you,
still noisily proclaimed,
still advertising
each Johnny-come-lately
poem as
**"brand new"

this is a very important poem to me,
about me, and how Obama slurred my people. and never apologized

<•>

there are mornings when I wake up
in my nativity,
in my born/bred,
these struggling to be happy,
United States,
strangely hebrew-speaking,
Jamaican coffee
morning-thinking,
tallying up
what I am,
who I am,
commanded to be,
on this Earth

the labels that the
outward-looking apply,
the tags,
that you have caused
yourself to be defined,
been staked
to your claim,
in infamy and in fame,
that you have
by action and indeed,

have allow
to be presented
as entries on your
global entry passport,
with visas from the
lows and highs,
places where
your have sinned and saved,
all the acts accumulated,
and those,
in pain,
you have been a witness to

word titles that
tinge and suffuse,
summation of my presentation,
sampler of words
like
father, poet,
American,
even,
a for-real
community organizer,
and of course,
bien sûr,
a
Jew

the quality of all these life's papers,
which I grade myself,
I,
the harshest marker
of all

once a young man,
safely away in college,
under the fresh-air freedom of the
university's in loco parentis,
in the early years
spent quantifying oneself

nearly fifty years ago,
now he,
revealed and recalled
when
his college typed-letter,
lately uncovered amidst his,
recently passed mother's papers

"Don't know what kind of
Jew
I will be, but be assured,
that I will be a
Jew
all my life"

so here I am doing my post-sabbath,
top of the week,
right it down,
qualifying myself,
coffee enraged engaged,
a new Sunday tally

taking all my terms,
reordering,
re-prior-itizing,
what was prior, first,
is no longer

decades decay,
events sway,
simple words change me, stain me

nearing on five decades later,
when this
son of speakers,
son of humanists and 
son of
 writers,
son of proud
Jews
rewrites his list

today I write/substitute,
a new order,
a tag gladly taken,
a marker given,
some what in pride,
some in shame too,
first and foremost,
à la manière d'Lincoln
I am
of, by and for

"a bunch of folks in a deli"

proud member of them
that so identify,
for they are among those
that shall not perish from the Earth

those
happenstance-not,
bunch of folks in a deli,
I claim as
mine own,
as they would
have claimed me

no subtly professed,
a diminishment intended,
and now
an honorific taken,
Medal of Honor provoked and embraced,
proudly inscribed,
visible on my forehead,
in the black ink of mourning,
a Presidential Cain Citation,
a tattoo of letters,
not numbers,
now moves up to
head of the list,
I am
now and forever,
a member of that corps
(appreciate that double entendre)
I am
Je suis
JE JUIF

*"a bunch of folks in a deli"

bitter month,
bitters in the mouth,
bitters all over the world
snow is Campari red

burning alive,
dying while flying
or just train-commuting home,
or even but taxiing home,
this month racks up ruin,
like keeping score at bowling,
Strike!
spare no one anywhere
this month is more cruel,
for its nearness to spring,
but offering no hope, no buds,
just random mayhem

slipped on the ice in the dessert
burning ice,
I hate this month
red, black snow
and no summer visions
only cold bitters