#poemsfrompoland
This is a white room
with tiny pencil drawings marching
around the walls in childish lines, telling
so many stories. Try
though I may, one thousand of my words
is worth less than one
of these drawings, and so
I think this space
is a place that needs
to be kept safe
inside your heart.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 7:45 AM UTC
A dark room filled
with the faces of the dead.
When you start to smile
at the videos of children
hopping across the grass, racing
each other in sacks, your smile
twists itself until
you only learn you are crying
when the salt stings your lips.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 6:21 AM UTC
Real people
could not have stood
inside these walls, four
to half a square meter.
Real people
could not have lived
inside these walls, four
breathing in unison.
Real people
could not have been
but how could real people
have done this.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 3:38 AM UTC
Let me tell you
about that room.
That room
is not a passage, that rom
is a dead end, that room
will lead you nowhere.
And in that room
your breath will catch
and your stomach will tremble
and your head will swim
and your heart will beat out rhythms
of fear, until you feel
they must have taken your soule
while you stood in wonder, and hidden it
under the thousands of shoes
that are heaped on your sides.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 11:31 AM UTC
In a different display, a doll
and children’s clothes, shoes
smaller than your hand, bibs
yellow with age and wear, hats
lovingly knitted for tiny ears. The doll
is missing her head, and it is amazing
how her blond sprawl of curls
is better cared for than the tons
of human hair in the other room.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 5:09 AM UTC
Thousands of glasses, twisted
like millions of spider legs, delicate
and the lenses that glitter-
hard eyes without a soul. I admit
I winced, instinctively
putting my hands up to my eyes,
for a second feeling the disorientation
and the dizziness, the helplessness
that come nightly with taking out
my contact lenses, before
I wear the glasses again
that accent my eyes, accomplices
aiders and abettors to the expression
of the soul I still have.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 4:14 AM UTC
The mountain of hair preserved
behind glass, hit you
in the stomach, stole
your breath, until you doubled over, tears
streaming down your face. The mountain
of hair, preserved behind impassive glass
sickened you, your stomach roiling
and twisting in your abdomen, while
you looked on, noticing
how tangled and matted
it all was, how it was piled in uncaring
heaps, as if every single strand
had not been attached to the head
of some woman. Even
the tiny blond braid, hiding quietly
in the middle.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 8:40 AM UTC
And on the stairs leading up
your foot catches
and once extricated
catches again. Every stair
the same, every step
an effort to lift
your feet, every inch
of the way a journey.
Every stair
indented, marked
the middles pressed down
by thousands of feet
that once were here
and are no more.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 2:37 AM UTC
The saddest part
is on the last days, when
you realize that your words
don’t come as easily, don’t flow
from you like pain, as
they did earlier. When you realize
you’ve seen so much
you’ve used up your quota
of surprise.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 1:51 AM UTC
Foolishly enough, you
thought you could run
away from everything, leave
everything behind, until
you found yourself in
Birkenau on your birthday, skies
overcast, and your mind
set upon you.
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 4:00 AM UTC
Years later, and the smell
hanging inside the latrines,
the stench
that twists your instincts,
has not
gone away. One thousand
two hundred
people every morning in
these latrines
sitting on concrete blocks
with the
round holes, so filthy that even
the murderers
won’t walk in, and I have
just walked
in from a ceramic and porcelain
shrine to
cleanliness.
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 8:30 AM UTC
Today is one of those days
when I’m not sure
if the screaming
I can faintly sense
on the very edge of perception
is coming from the millions
of murdered here
or if it’s just rending the air
inside of my mind, coming
from me.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 4:37 AM UTC
Silently, we sit
in a circle, reading
our letters. And they
my classmates, my
temporary family, absorb words
I will never see, and
shake quietly, weeping. You
sent me a letter, too
and you tell me you love me,
underlined twice and adorned
with an exclamation point. You
tell me you love me, and
stand tall, seemingly
above me, not seeing
how I have grown long ago
out of your shadow. You
say you love me, and this
is a gunshot, but I
have put a silencer
in your rifle. In order to cry
you still have to care.
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 4:04 AM UTC
Today is so beautiful.
Today is so beautiful in the forest.
Today is so beautiful in the forest with the blue sky and the golden leaves.
Today is so beautiful in the forest with the blue sky and the golden leaves and the ten thousand buried in mass graves.
How.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 11:48 AM UTC
How strange
that a bus
can become a home
and intimate strangers
can become a family.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 5:16 AM UTC
When all but a few
are here
alive
for only twenty minutes
And those who are here
longer are
killed
after only a few months
How could you ask why
no Jew
human
tried to fight back?
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014 at 3:19 AM UTC
A field of stones-
impassive
grey.
If I did not know
what they hide-
thirty three mass graves-
I would not think
to be horrified.
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 4:32 PM UTC
How can pain
be so light
so clean
so gratifying?
This pain
is releasing, relieving me
of my guilt,
survivors’ guilt.
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 10:28 AM UTC
Twenty minutes.
That’s all it took.
Off the train
Through the gate
Down the track
Relinquish your valuables
Relinquish your old life
Relinquish your life.
Twenty minutes.
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 8:24 AM UTC
And though we are
six feet under,
the sun shines
and music plays.
“Yea though I walk
through the valley of death
I will not fear,
for you are with me.”
And yea as I walk
through these places of death
I have to ask-
were you with them?
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 6:11 AM UTC
As we walk
towards a concrete wall, towards
nothing, as you did, we
slowly, almost imperceptibly,
sink. As we walk
we are in direct juxtaposition
and symmetry to
your fate. For while we all
walk towards nothing, our nothing
will end, and you
are still interred around us.
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 5:07 AM UTC
Half a million walked in this gate
and vanished.
Half a million walked down this path
and were buried in mass graves.
Half a million were here
and this place is forgotten
because half a million died.
What right do I have
to walk in
and walk out?
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 4:56 PM UTC
You brought forward
all of your gold
all of your jewels
all of your shoes
all of your hope
and you received
a stone. Years later
I stand, free, looking
at a piece of nothing
you received in return
for everything.
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 11:06 AM UTC
A mountain
of dead, and I
am not crying, it’s just
a bit of ash that flew
and found its way into
my eye.
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 1:43 AM UTC
“And they all
slept huddled together, and
when one turned over, all
had to shift.” What a gift
that my lying this close
to you is only
my choice.
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 4:37 PM UTC