How I Observed the Day of Atonement

If you are unfamiliar with day and its observance,
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

In a place of perfect solitude,
No crowded synagogue within to hide,
No cantor to intercede on my behalf,
I spoke words of mine own creation
To my creator who wisely empowers me
To judge myself, for knowing, none harsher,

We two,
Old travel companions,
Upon worn grayed, adirondacke thrones,
We overlooked,
A natural prayer place,
Bay and breeze, white-clouded and sun-laced.
Only the full time inhabitants, the animals,
Grayling butterflies to match and contrast,
Eavesdropping on our Greek dialogos, in this,
Palace of Perfect Solitude.

Amiable did we chat,
I of family, this and that.

He, wearied from recent travel,
To Syria and India,
Was glad for a day off,
For he had little to do,
But wait for twilight,
To then close the books.

For us no formality, easy the going,
No prosecutor no defender in residence,
For we exchange these roles intermittently,
The incriminatory, the penance, all deeds displayed,
No adult games of winking eyes, and
Hidden heart, secret chambers,
Rabbinical or angelic intercession.

He does so love his Bach,
Adagio on strings,
My soothing gift to him,
This music more than divine.

He returned this courtesy.

Warming sun to expose my chest,
Cooling genteel breeze offsetting,
The bay emptied of wayfaring skiffs and yachts.

A cooling beverage proffered,
But sighing, he said that he had yet to find
A beverage that his kind of thirst could slake.
For his eyes, tho shining, did not effervesce,
As when we shared this day in years past.

Too much killing, this year,
It tires me so to tabulate human excess,
Spoke not a word, for my critique would
Comfort him less, if at all.

Thanks for Kol Nidre, he plainted,
So I too can disavow,
The best intended oaths I took and take,
For each year, I fail more than the year before.

If only I could sit with each,
As I do with you,
Where what needs saying,
Is said, understood, undisguised as praying.

A schooner to the dock did appear,
For him it attended, for him, it waited,
Sails, both black and white.

He stood to depart, my arms-grasped, taken, he graphing,
Measuring my fortitude, my strengths, my divinity.

I do so love this day in your company.
I shall sit with you again one year on,
Bach sweet when next we meet, please.

Soft spoke, as almost I should not hear,
Your time is nigh, no thing I create is forever.
He spoke with such sadness,
For well I knew, the intent, his meaning.

He, for-himself, saddened, for he loved
Sitting  beside me in this manner,
Since my inception, never deception,

Only He resting easy, when he atoned before me,
And I gave him his absolution conditional,
As he gave me,
mine

My midnight blue satin dress
Someone said that it’s wicked, wicked tease
However, I know better:
it controls my every mood
Staying ahead as my curves survey the scenery
  I swayed down the avenues

Who’s going be the lucky fellow?
To auction it off my back
Who’s the one that
  see 3-D images with only one eye?
but to see what lies beneath this midnight blue
is sating memories

I felt the earth move under my feet
Pleats and creases;
hisses and random kisses
Tonight I am your mistress
and most of all
the goddess in the mist

Airbrush my body with admiration.
but never again say you love me
What is love?

who will read aloud
my poems
when I'm gone?

that old unfriended thot,
a nagging merry query
was for awhile forgot,
put on the back of an upper shelf,
where dust motes and mites
fear to trend

thoughts,
that I thought
I had dispensed with,
letting time
build illusionary wry walls,
fooling World Trade Center tall

morose forlorn,
pensiveness of
red ant armies,
incapable of
black marker redaction,
there is always one
a lingering malingerer
a sole fado singer,
playing woeful jazz in
the Quarter
on an empty emoty street,
dressed and guised
as the soul of a solitary
cancerous cell
"survivor"

cur overlooked,
biding time,
the surgeons gone,
the drugs flushed,
radiation burning
no more

begins then
the unholy
trilogy cycle

worn out, overused...
invasive categorically relentless
maybes,
what ifs,
then
oh goddamnnotagain

because believed, on knee,
I oathed that
loathed, raven nevermore,
ought
that
cracked door would be open

yet like the
New Orleans levee aged locks
hurricane succumbed
overflowed, overcome,
keyholed, infiltrated,
falllen to the enemy,
mes enfilade,
rumps up the black flag of
surrender

brain sneers
periodically,
like every other
minute, ok,
second,
coyly asking
penny for your
worthless thoughts?

just when you believed
"no mas"
was a prayer that had been heard,
teeth kicked in,
body snatching
hordes and boors
bad boys and ******,
sitting high in the
saddle again,
grinning torturous
tarty smiles
at who,
at you, fool!

you're as alone in that place
as insufficiently as that
impoverished overused
word can ere convey

the nagging realization
that when asking

no one answers

when your thinkings
perish you
your cutesy sweatshirt reads
last standing poet alive,
stabbed ded by awful-truths,
you failed and
all the black cats,
have fled the neighborhood,
just when need was greatest

who will read aloud
my poems when I'm gone,
has been silently answered

by silent applause,
the last theater goer
shuffles out, and turns
and extends his *******
his review leaves a
singular impression,
he looks familiar,
gauntly ghost,
he has accompanied me always
and his finger is his
triumphal parting shot