you have a death grip
on dignity

More not needed.
Not now, not ever.

Let the rage course,
The tears, coarse,
Fall free,
When no ones looking.

The panic attack,
The body all a-wrack,
The fury unleashed,
The sobbing secret,
When no ones there.

I know, I know.

Small consolation.
Worse, no one to share,
Worse, the one to share,
Is the one making life unfair.

But all this pales by compare,
When the words out loud you speak,
The lodestar, the key phrase.
                    
I hear them, though by proxy.
I read them, though far by mile,
I am comforted in the knowing,
That anyone who can write those words
Is stronger than most.


You
Have
A death grip
On dignity.

No more needed.

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

"How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob,
Your dwelling places, O Israel!"

Thy children gather,
telescoping generations,
O Jacob, what do thine eyes ascertain.
what history do they memorize?

Coalescing younger star clusters,
disparate related families uniting,
embedding as a single unity,
a star cloud,
shedding a new light,
the astronomers awed, witnesses,
a super-star cluster birthed.

The beauty of thy tents,
thy wealth, O Jacob,
is their multiplicity,
their construct and content.

The web of thy tissue,
bindings, linkages,
what resides within thy tents,
acknowledge, testify, that
the strength of thy issue,
are the Matriarchs,
managers of thy destiny,
mothers of thy dynasty,

The Sarah's, Leah's, the Rachel's,
the Fay's, the Ginger's, the Miriam's
these jewels bedeck, beautify,
brides and bridles of thy tents,
master mistresses of thy dwellings,
without them, O Jacob,
you, but, just,
another desert tribe.

My poetry is an acquired taste,
So come, dear one,
Place your tongue in my mouth.
Pace yourself, there is so much,
Spoke and unwritten,
That fruitions only when spit-shared.

Flick your tongue-tip to mine,
Sealing bond, the salt caramel of my rhymes,
The iambic meter of my tamarind prose,
The buds, flowering, poems forming,
Watered by the admixture of joint, minted saliva.

My poetry, so very complicated,
Hints of currants and ash,
Soil volcanic, basaltic vowels, oh's and eyes,
Cursed verses that commence with I,
Nonetheless, despite soil inhospitable rued,
Compositions flourish, born wetland soluble.

Yours, for the taking,
Yours, for the tasting.

You place your fingers on my waist,
My body of work to contemplate,
My ditties, you spit out,
You want courses, not appetizers,
You want truths, not fluff, lies, menu tastings.

Columbus and Magellan, thy fingers named,
Trace the curvature of my ***,
With tip and tipsy stroked caresses,
You laugh with the pleasure of all the sssssss's.
Hissing all the day your satisfaction,
Capturing my writs, by your tongue's duress,
Recipient-thief of my literary largesse.

I am dressed all in white,
Stripped bare to my native coloring,
Except for two brown nippled spots, you lick,
Imbibing milky thoughts  from fountain-heads *****,
Savoring, relishing, stanzas that praise love's flavor.

With every line, every word-painting accessioned,
You make my soft parts hard,
My hard parts soft, but my liquidity,
My tears, they, that, you drink straight,
Licking, liking, and oohing and ahhing,
You tongue curled, upside down arching,
The storage point of your seduced gatherings.

To drain me full, your incisors cut,
Straight lines, entry points for your *******,
Taking, draining, leaving nothing,
Not even one aleph or bet escaping.

When you acquired my poetry, my verbosity,
Pillaging soul's hiding place, took and *****,
Your acquired the best, breaking my nape,
Imprisoned on and by my island's seascape,
Blanched and pained, a blank tape,
I am tasteless, witless, mockingly, tongue-tied.