Yesterday
I started the year
Walking

It was cold
Dark
Smelled of fireworks

When I walked
I thought about the terrible year
And all that it carried inside

I thought about the day of the divorce
The day with my dad in Tel-Aviv
The night I panicked so much
That I almost needed to go to the hospital
And all the times I told my cousins stories
While I put them to sleep

I thought about all of the terrible moments
And then I thought
...

It's over

I shout it silently
Jumping around and crying
Smile on my face

I did it
I survived all of it!
I am still alive!
I am fine!

Proud.

Then I think of death
And how this must be how it feels
Except not needing to go back
Not knowing what else
Is going to need to be endured

But at that moment
Though crying
And remembering all the terrible things
I  liked 2025

imagine that loneliness
has an executive secretary
who works his/her work schedule,
and loneliness forgets
to give her/him
the proper recognition, and
when he/she forgets everything,
loneliness turns up the isolation

I do not want
a single wish granted,
  because if it is
   I will not have
    this exquisite longing
     in my heart
      for you.
It supplies me with
foolish and wonderful dreams,
  life-giving and death-defying hope,
   hearty laughter
    and childlike vision,
      the plotting of courses
       to distant, unreachable
        shores.
I do not want you
to say yes to me,
  and replace these things
   with the difficult drama
    of mundane reality,
     familiarity,
      with all her
       boisterous children.
No pessimist, I, no fatalist,
no hopeless, gutless,
  whining quitter, I bound
   up the stairway of hope
    three steps at a time
     the longing in my heart
      for your love
       invigorating
        my soul.
Remain aloof, and inaccessible,
and let me dream
   my impossible dreams.

Through poetry, I found my voice.
Lost, long ago, shame gave me no choice.
I used to speak in front of hundreds,
thousands even,
and now I don't speak, I listen;
to the ballads;
to the tunes of the heart; the words we don't say.
The beats are the words I wished were okay.
But, by not talking, I had come out of sync
with who I became, needing to re-ink
Become proud even, to reclaim.
My voice sounds different now, softer and older, but the essence is still the same.

alright, alright, the records sound good
and the mulled wine tastes great.

everything here is tidied up;
swept, mopped, vacuumed, wiped down
to an immaculate degree

it matters very little though
when your utterly alone
on Christmas Day
in a clean house
without anybody
to ***** it up
again.

all I have are these thoughts,
these tiny flashes,
you appear,
then disappear,
then reappear
once more.

I can only imagine you bringing us a drink
while we laugh at the same movie
we’ve seen for the 400th time
and the kids are playing at our feet
with their new toys and board games
and eating oranges or chocolates
or walnuts on a white cozy afternoon

but looking around now
while dipping into the 5th scoop
of wine from out of the ***,
there appears to be
nobody here.

I add cranberries, an orange slice and a cinnamon stick
as I switch the record to Leatherface or Joy Division
or The Shocking Blue or Black Sabbath or
the collected works of Richard Strauss
but it doesn’t help my melancholia,
only suppresses it
for a while

and as the dog stares wide-eyed
and the cat leaps out wildly
and the gloomy clouds roll by
and the poem writes its obituary
to a silent response,

the music grips my heart
and squeezes it like the
blood of an
orange

and I am
utterly alone
without
you.