We are going to bomb them so that they will stop the rocket fire
Says the memshellah: prime minister, in 2014
Funny how that seems like a transparency
Of what the memshellah said in 2004, 2003...
Sounds something like what was being said
On the bus to the University of Haifa
Radio Turned up by the Bus Driver:
mmm--eeem, mmm-eeem, mmmm-eeem
Which must have meant: we have bombed them
and now the violence will stop

Do we have the memories of a fruit fly?
Every twenty four hours, a new death, a new day
Begins and the same thing is done
An endless repeat of a survival
with no wisdom, no intelligence

Pilgrims on their knees, travel to the church
in Mexico
Like pilgrims and tourists, gawk at the treasures of
Jerusalem: to be near God
God has wisdom

So what does God have to say?
Looking down, the next bomb drops
And for awhile, after the blood spatter and tears,
Or maybe after the explosion and the body meat
is picked up and put in plastic bags
And it begins anew

What can God say, to make it stop?

he or she will do this: the child meltdown crazy act
in an adult
and I will blanche into an affectless emotionless marble slab
deflector shields up, they can't hurt me
the dysfunction energy will well up surround me
rush over me like a tornado flows over a house
as I hide in the basement

"You incite it" she said
Me?  The quivering victim
pain radiating out of severed nerve endings
he/she said it, and he/she targets me
"You think it means something"
Of course it does...after all...but wait
"She's not your mother. He's not your mother."
Mother, destroyed me. Can't criticize her.  Hurts her too much.
She lashes out.  I fall.  I must disintegrate into a writhing mass
Crying, water evaporating out of my eyes to drain the life from me
Destroyed, she stands over me, gives me a hand up.  All is good.
It doesn't mean anything.  It's just a crazy person.  I react like
something has been found out
That this craziness has merit to it and should be considered instead of just
let pass like a ball aimed at me that misses it's intended target.
Not worth the effort

Anxiety is at the heart of all that ails me
like my best friend ever, it has always been with me
So familiar, my anchor in the dark
I return to it endlessly to remind me that this is just like the rest
This new thing, this new test
is just the familiar torture you've known all your life

By my side, it destroys my mind, and I can't stop
this addiction, will always be with me,
The lies it tells me, that this turbo spinning depleting energy keeps me safe
That the constant tension that translates into fear and self hate
Is as it should, as it was set up for me
And blocks me, just when I want most to be free and easy

Letting go of my best friend, so scary, and feels so light
and beautiful, like the afternoon sun in a quiet garden
where everything is colorful and peaceful and the air is fresh and warm
and there is the smell of water from a hose...slightly rusty with an aromatic humidity
and little birds flutter about, and a sound of a buzzing insect appears occasionally
All is well, and from here I can do anything
but I catch myself: I am not safe without my best friend
and the ax falls down into the scene and it is now night and I am hungry and cold
and unwelcome and stalked and frightened, as it should be.

Anxiety is my enemy
It keeps me from this delight in life
and I can go on: and when I meet it again
I shouldn't welcome it in like a friend, but finally
be honest about it and say: go away
You have no use anymore in my life
You served me at one time, but that time is over
and you must evaporate
and I must face the fear alone, without you
You stay back, and I go forward, with courage.

Anxiety is at the heart of all that ails me
like my best friend ever, it has always been with me
So familiar, my anchor in the dark
I return to it endlessly to remind me that this is just like the rest
This new thing, this new test
is just the familiar torture you've known all your life

By my side, it destroys my mind, and I can't stop
this addiction, will always be with me, I think
The lies it tells me, that this turbo spinning depleting energy keeps me safe
That the constant tension that translates into fear and self hate
Is as it should, as it was set up for me
And blocks me, just when I want most to be free and easy

Letting go of my best friend, so scary, and feels so light
and beautiful, like the afternoon sun in a quiet garden
where everything is colorful and peaceful and the air is fresh
and there is the smell of water from a hose...slightly rusty with an aromatic humidity
All is well, and from here I can do anything
but I catch myself: I am not safe without my best friend
and the ax falls down into the scene and it is now night and I am hungry and cold
and unwelcome and stalked and frightened, as it should be.

So anxiety is my enemy
It keeps me from this delight in life from feeling all is right
and I can go on: and when I meet it again
I shouldn't welcome it in like a friend, but finally
be honest about it and say: go away
You have no use anymore in my life
You served me at one time, but that time is over
and you must evaporate
and I must face the fear alone, without you
You stay back, and I go forward, with courage.

I went and saw and lost myself and never thought it would happen to me
like a car accident with fire trucks and ambulances and police
and stretchers and pour souls waiting
that will never happen to me
Until down into the abyss I go and time seems to slow
and I surf without getting wet
pathetic just like the rest
An addiction nevertheless that freezes thought in an instant
and replaces them with endless searching for meaning and fragile connection
Circling around, look here, no direction, life on hold and desperate without risk
spinning out of control on the internet.

like my mind is filled with ideas
my material world is boxed in by things
over capacity knowledge stores on paper pads
and journals by the pound
around me they surround
time capsules prepared industriously on the daily by me
notes and books and handouts and work outs, all strewn about
my mind externally, representing fragment thoughts ideas left whole
thoughts pursued and cast aside and fleshed out to live a life of their own
Ordinary mortals see a cluttered desk, books and papers spilling over this
But it's a furnace of the imagination, taking shape, each item a puzzle piece to be
put together, and torn apart and worked on through the night until it's just right.

Saturday morning
Bedroom with sun shining through my green diaphanous curtain
My cats have carved out little holes where sun strikes through, unfiltered
and a rhythmic sound from above
Someone is getting frisky
and has a squeaky bed
And the natural cycle spins on, faster, faster
more intense and finally gone in silence
It's better than violence
but still TMI

I've been told, I live in the past
I am aghast.
Always looking that way,
just live in today
it's so easy you see
not for me
I give up hope
Just do, throw down the anchor on a rope
and just sit
Such a perfect view on the way it was
and only because it was this way
have I a problem now
In a boat, on a sunny day, on a lake
I sit, am rocked by a wake
of a passing cruiser
Around me is a moat made by me
you can't really see it, it's not real
I can see out
but not touch anything,
and I doubt
I will ever move again,
reach for the rope!
pull the anchor up!
put my chin up!
stiff upper lip!
What have we? quick! man the oars!
Plug the drain!
onward mates, haven't got all day!
I lift my eyes and ponder the horizon
balanced on  the moving water
shrouded by fog,
is my future
I look at it, still floating like a log...it's all I can do

What comes next?
A fusion with brain and internet? *** text.
descriptions of positions and inhibitions undone
crawling down the screen,
like  morse code across the sea
or an old computer reading cards, blurting out silent sentences
passing lights on the screen,
then gone
or the News crawl passing on the bottom of the TV
without the repeats
all in our imaginations
the touches, movements, even some sensations
the connection of  two biologies
two living breathing human beings,
much more complicated than simple machines

But this is the computer,
the technology star
that brought us fame and power and wealth
Now seems a bit in ill health.
A downward spiral,
like a old rock star, playing at a seedy corner bar:
the technology that sent a man to the moon
and fought the Soviets until their doom
the frightening technology
of my childhood years,
big computers creating bigger fears
and now being put to good use
as I have my fellow in a metaphorical noose
our fingers go across the keys
and send signals to each other's bodies
connected in imagination with mine
and it's frightening how it works to well
Almost like reality, I can barely tell
but then it's over and in the after glow
A thought taps me on the shoulder, tells me I should know
that in the end the bond with the human being
has evaporated like silent steam,
Not because we're mean
But because he's not there
but now I'm aware
of a peculiar new bond with my phone

My crazy mind, roller coaster mind, mind is a whirl pool can't comprehend
Makes no sense, comes in waves, a moment ago I was broken and done for
over some dude I don't care for and now he's forgotten
Is my head filled with cotton?
This makes no sense,
I'm crazy as all hell
Can't you tell?

Or some kind of Countess
Even though she looks like kind of a mess
and my shrink was right
as she is every time
he likes her cuz she's rich
My X and me, my shrink says it's still raw for me
and him
but they fine
My cousins live in Oakland
And they work a day and have a Union
Back to the middle class, on my ***!
As he floats by with millionaires, but they do have cares
I know that now, and how
He lives on his trust fund, and works some
and takes happy pictures in bars
And they seem happy enough, yes they are
but what can you see online?
I saw she's insecure
big surprise, just why
you need to announce your relative?
and I know he's only nice after he's had a few
nothing new, to me
His best friend has a trophy bride
Or maybe he married his daughter
So gross, these rich men and their habits
Sometimes we can't change our outer circumstance
But we do have a chance
if we try real hard
to rake up our little zen yard in our mind

Shopping in discount stores
living the unglamorous life, that's me
It's not strife
but rife, with challenge and epiphany
telling me what I want to be
no matter what I see in me now
He talks to me like he's shopping for me
comparing me to these other females
must be making a lot of e-mails
I love your voice, I like your hair, great body
does he even care I feel like a product on the shelf
is he talking to me or somebody else and now
I'm in full blown obsession, no connection but Facebook
messenger tells about his session
and it wasn't with me, you see
What to do, I don't know, he cast the hook,
I wouldn't go just can't know what right
but this feels wrong when I got home
I opened the bomb, the wine and took a big slug
worked better than his cyber hug and
promises of massages
check my phone a million times a day
I'm as crazy as yesterday
It just lies dormant in the night
I can't fight
I check the phone a million times
Oh God, here it comes again
I don't remember when I was so confused
Should I have taken is invitation to go on that impromptu vacation?
Up with his family, how awkward can that be, what to do
I'd be ballin' baby. I can't afford it. I just have to ignore it
and turn off, turn down that voice in my head
that said: you must have him now
you can't survive on your own
you must belong to someone
but I'm just fine with no one

Do not cross
the weathered plastic, still yellow, faded blows in the wind
the unsolved, cold case file
there lies, me
"we decided a long time ago," says the detective
"it was pointless to continue.  this will never be solved."
so we put the evidence away in a cardboard box with a label in sharpie and
little plastic bags full of samples of entrails and remnants of a life she once had
and buried the body
but she was still alive
and the box was taken deep down into a sub basement 17 floors from the surface
and filed and there it sits, gathering now a thick layer of dust, unmoved
the cardboard becomes fragile and the evidence dessicates and the body
remains buried, hidden and
yet the victim is still alive and apparently normal
Apparently, but not really, some kind of cold dead inside ***** snatching
a heart stolen and sold on the black market by someone she trusted
but she still moves, walks, lives

I see them all the time, walking entwined
oh, there are problems i see too but there is this glue
sticking them together a rubber band connected, sometimes snaps
sometimes doesn't last
but for me it is ruined, i still can't answer the question you asked me ten years ago
in Haifa Israel at Ha Bank cafe: what would you do if this ended
your cold hand and heart and I said I would be a nun meaning
deadened feelings and no connection again because I trusted you
and I should never of but I believed in you
and never should of and I can't open up again I am not over it
will never heal this fresh wound from a decade ago
never will the raw bleeding stop and I can't
I can't to that again, that opening and hoping and stupid dreaming
that ends in betrayal and being cast off like garbage
with a wedding dress sold to a filthy store in the armpit of the city by you
and my china, some kind of symbol of hope and love to be
some kind of promise of married happiness and fidelity
you sold that too the day I left
you destroyed me
so love is for other people, not the road **** that is my heart
baking in the sun and unrecognizable flattened into oblivion

You say, I love your body
You only have a picture and I liquified it to make me skinnier
never thought I'd get a notice, now you invite me
It would take me out of my loneliness
but can I expose myself to the pain of
seeing me for real? what a stupid predicament
Oh, my body, I changed my meds, gained even more weight
God. The softness of vulnerability
I want to take your invitation
should...but I am sealed over
plastic veneer breaking, want to reach out and touch
want that human warmth, to destroy me

not so beautiful a life
normal on the outside
filled with internal strife
the day you said you loved me
My heart opened up to see
the day we parted
i felt tossed into the sea

the unfamiliar Atlantic
so way far from shore
an open heart is bleeding
don't need it anymore

So I closed my heart forever
sealed it up with a stitch
covered it with a zipper
threw it in a ditch
and I've been living ever since
in a fine kind of life
but now I want my heart to open
to peak out, risk being broken

even for a moment
the fear comes howling back
will I drown in the cold, dark ways
or now do I have a knack
for balance and resignation
to the fact that nothing lasts forever
we just go from station to station
on a train ride with no destination

What am I doing
I don't even know you
I'm done with this, everything warm and vulnerable forever you know
was betrayed, now closed up shop, the end
love can't touch me
why open myself to hurt again
that felt like it would **** me?
and yet, still alive
I move toward you

chemistry, yes
I feel it
so hard to just not think say
ambiguity
uncertainty
you are welcome here and I can
just sit with you and s'ok I don't have to know
how this is where it is going how it will
end

My Facebook friend turned cyber lover
no, I won't send you any those kind of pics and
you say you like me,  then my voice on the phone
I forgot if I like you
we both like to crawl up steep hills but who
are you?
I am afraid, this just early stage or ending/beginning that
never went anywhere what is this? Silly cyber friend
so new to me and maybe in my worries I forgot to ask
do I like you?

I forgot part of the question
                                                          what was it?
Learning                                  history                                your
she  was too young, so was I
need a good grade...am at the coffee shop...drank the coffee....ate the cookie
wasted time on FB                    the question WAS
It pulls on me and someone puts on Death Metal and there's this gutteral gravely synthesized voice
and (what was the que--)
being pulled, resisting, but it's too strong
and I'm in
floating in memory....the question
to answer I have to slit my chest open and let some of the contents run free
as I ... it wasn't all books and pencils and how dare you ask such a question
my life wasn't a hallmark card
she was only 10 and she was my best friend so that means I was only 10
My learning history--how can I even think...we had a psychic bond we did a test
and it showed and she was a little chubby with golden skin and
her father was creepy and he left out his copies of Hustler for me to see and
told me beauty was in the eye of the beholder
but to **** a ten year old that is vile
I remember...a day or so later, going over to her house where she showed me
what she brought home from the hospital
(chalk and teachers, and winning jelly beans for knowing state capitals)
and she had coca cola in her fridge and all the latest appliances from Sears because
her father worked there, like a push button phone and a washer/dryer with a digital display
and clocks, too, like that and when she told me what happened it was like
being electrocuted painlessly for about three hours and I had to leave
because...books.  drawing things and teacher don't give a **** about anyone
and today, children are much more protected and people talk about things
but then
(my learning history? I remember desks, and boards and being nervous)
and how can a grown man take a ten year old he knows and tell her
they were going to find someone and instead
stop the van, just looked like her father's van
(today we are doing long division)
demand she goes into the back of the van and take off her pants
and stick his tongue in her mouth
and then kick her out
bleeding so she ran to a vet and they called the ambulance
(and she never came back to school)
and I started piling on more clothes, layers.  
You can't show those ... what is happening to you
and my learning history
I can first give you this
caked in blood and no, it's no longer bleeding, thought it was
I have unearthed something
there was something in the way and
that's why I couldn't answer the question

Luminol when sprayed on a cleaned wall
that was once stained with the blood of a human being
will light up every splatter, and reveal the crime scene in all it's
chaotic splendor, even after years of careful hiding

Things happen every day in my creamy, dreamy life
moods, like the calm bay that hides the sharks underneath
the blood splatter of the natural cycle is covered in blue indistinct waves
while carnage and drama play themselves out in the silent muted depths

And as the bay gets darker the further you go down
especially in the deep canyon where a fervent Japanese submarine snuck
into California waters, and chased a boat around briefly before dissapearing
forever, just as these depths contain mystery and waste
so my thoughts, once so churned and pained, lie dormant and unseen
with the plastic forks that are stuck in the sand
and the plastic bags that move by in the darkness like ghosts
Because beneath the surface, in that deepest groove
is where all the pain and waste and wreck of civilization has accumulated
and is creating a new order in a once pristine reusable recyclable landscape
But I cannot see my depths, only try to feel them
in a primitive way, like sonar--what is this?
A small submersible floats through the deep cold water down there
through the snow flakes of biological residue that is food for life
and it looks at the garbage and sends back a video signal
that this is a warning, of our ceaseless, accumulating destruction unseen

I read of my suffering, and the writing has depth, meaning
nuance imagination and now
it's just a smooth comfortable silken slide of living
I guess I have no eye for detail, no feeling for nuance
Living in a rip tide for so long, the fight
the struggle to stay afloat and not die with water
in my lungs brought out a technicolor world
that I can't feel, can't see now, can't get it to appear,
and every day things happen, but I can't feel them, think them
It's just smooth and easy and I'm used to rocks and sharpness and pain

He's a bit odd, this groovy guy
without cash it seems and young, so young
and strange, new age and runs barefoot every day
and oh, what muscular legs he photographs and one day
he'd done it before, but  one day, a picture of his legs and dropped shorts
surfer shorts, keys on top, at the pinnacle of some hill
Kind of a thrill and he posts his feet running, running
up and up and then a view and I love to think of him
And imagine, and yet I know how silly it is to think of
his strong arms, and such well formed body
working out his core, always the core, everything
is the core, the core
Working it out, with me.

Deathline, trapped, burdened, crashed, crushed
Locked up for hours muddling thoughts of escape
The sun, the bright freezing sky, dark blue churned up ocean topped with white caps
like moving whipped cream
I dream, from my claustrophobic place
Pressure cooked, mind squished, must I say this again and again
Finish. Burden lifted, fantasy of floating away
must stay, mind locked into treadmill, rolling out producing
breathing stale air, mind in a tunnel, through muddy darkness

It was only a moment a few days ago
like I want a dog on Sundays
at a dog beach
that I thought
Wouldn't it be so nice to go home
to a warm man in my bed?

How cold I've become,
in this life alone
that this thing I used to think was a necessity
I can totally live without
and there's hardly a time where
I feel even the slightest desire
to open my heart to another

I want to save all the cat and all the kittens
and all the wild cats and all the cubs
I want the killing to stop
and I am powerless

Others, how so uncaring?
They look inside the cage and see something
like a stuffed animal I guess
nothing real, no soul underneath
easy to destroy

It's a **** stroke, no matter how you look at it
especially if you look at men from underneath
from the bottom of the pool
It's not to hard to see
where that movement comes from

I want friends as percentages
that would be more realistic
in "social media" that makes me feel anti-social
I wish we could go back to a time
when we saw each other face to face
looked each other in the eye
and didn't exploit the fact that we're too lazy
to get up and do that
the isolation increases, the fantasy heightens
Reality doesn't matter so much anymore

I had to do it, since I wanted to see him again
one last time, it was OK
Just a guy in a typical poofy too big man's shirt
Funny how men try to puff themselves up with their clothes and suit
and we try to look smaller,
undershirt borders underneath too big white sleeve his wife bought
A married weight, a paunch that began at chest level
and made him look like a mango and brown slacks
a tan, and that curly hair with the little twirl on to that seemed to asked to be
grabbed onto and pulled back
and his authority the sexiest part
I needed him to sign a form and he took a long time to sign it
read every tiny thing, as I squirmed inside, but sat up straight and
perky so happy to be here.
was he drawing out--for me?
Then he looked at me with those baby blues
up from the paper on the desk, with those deep rivets in his forehead
all these huge scrunched up muscles
why do they need muscles even on their forehead?
and I was pierced to the center
and I know I'd think he's a bore
and as I drove away I saw him walk out of the building
carrying a lunchbox his wife probably fixed for him
and no, I'm not proud that I feel like this
and no, it's never something to act on
but as I drove home, I thought of him
despite the mango body, the huge shirt
and my not in shape profile that would have to be
crammed into a corset I thought about a lot
and if I could forgive him his middle aged flaws
I should be able to forgive mine
because humans are much more complex than those
dumb two dimensional magazines let you believe and
we haven't been photographed for all the thousands of years we've been reproducing

An Israeli pilot was missing for years
and presumed dead
somewhere in the vast desert of the Sinai

I don't want them to die
my old relationships, I don't like killing
I'm No ****, nothing must die under my watch
even unhealthy relationships that are only anxious attachments
and it's better to accept the finality of their death
let them provide compost
nutrients for a better one to grow
that is the life cycle

Out of the emptiness of the Sinai, grew a date palm
Strange, so much so, that a search crew landed and dug around it
And they found him, the pilot, who ate dates, and put the pits in his pocket
before he died.

When I first saw him, he smiled, was very welcoming
And I thought nothing really about him, Authority figure warning this boss
who wasn't my boss because now I'm a student but there was nothing about him
Just another AP, covered in man clothes, long shirts and collars and belts and
slacks and at a married weight with a paunch over his belt and a picture of a
child on his cell phone. same old.

At the meeting I was sitting next to him and I felt that feeling
the authority figure disease I get where I think he's hot
and I noticed he had blue eyes, and a good build underneath
the married weight and this was totally insane.

I'm just nervous.  I don't really want to ride him like a pony
as I was thinking and crossed my legs and imagined
us naked, stealing away in some bland hotel and
just going at it to ecstasy and that blood rush feeling that starts
in your groin and seems to go out the Universe and you
share it with that, other being who for this moment is God and you Goddess

And the meeting was boring, so I shifted my legs again and
thought.  I'm just nervous.  This is what I do.
My habit of mind.
He doesn't really look like Robin Thicke
and I don't care and God I hope he doesn't notice
or can't read my mind and he turned and tried his best
to look up my skirt and I'm sure in his mind,
it's my fault he did that when his wife lives inside his cell phone
and has borne him new beings and here he is

And thank God the meeting was over and I never thought
about him again, not once

A student again, how cute it is and really I feel free
the thoughts, of life, and planning and how things could be
not tied down to a job and obsessing about my boss did this and that
and what does it mean for me now and why and
today I had a wasted day but that is normal

Because life is full of wasted moments, and
the most tragic moments are those we don't feel
The painful part isn't that we were at the laundromat
and put our stuff down to study and highlight in different colors
and a woman put her family there on top of our stuff with McDonald's for five even
though there were only three, and that there was nothing good at the Goodwill
Even the Rainbow colored sweater from Lane Bryant, which was way too big
and that the laundry from a month took hours and yes, we really do have that many socks

What is wasted are those moments folding the pile of shirts where we are not there
we are somewhere lost in mourning over a lost love and thinking,
he loved me more than he loves her, I just know.
Because all we have at that moment is this pile of a zillion articles of clothing
most of which looks like it could be hanging at the Goodwil and
a flimsy plastic chair and two times the amount of highlighters we needed because they were half price and we are hungry, but the snack machine is turned off and you can
only look at the cookies and hot cheetohs
and yearn for them and imagine the flakey tenderness of the vanilla wafer
crumble gentley into your mouth, and watch your creepy
neighbors walk into the strip mall listening to a song on a phone
like it's a boom box
and this is your moment to feel and live

We make grooves in our minds, I'm told
Our thoughts, the racing ones, that we go to
are like grooves, the ones we obsess about
and when we clear our minds we make new
connections, literally
new grooves and rivers and inlets and that's why it's so hard to break
a thought pattern and my groove

is a man, always and once I've done with one I am relieved and think
I will never do that again and then the going gets tough and
I am anxious and I suddenly start thinking about a new one
and I don't know him and or I don't like him and it's better
if he has a girlfriend or wife because I can think
oh, they have the perfect life and I am cold and outcast
looking in a perfection, out in the cold and

it's existential really, to ungroove this, to make
a new pathway I need to know, to make a groove that
says, no one is perfect and always happy
it doesn't exist in this world
and you are not the abandoned child looking in at
your parents happiness forever and ever

But it's so hard...my new one I don't even know...only in pictures
a kind of celebrity, of sorts, but I don't like things he's done and he's got
a wife who is on TV and I don't like her either since she's with him and she
knows what he's done, and is doing and she still married him
and they are not always perfectly happy
they are rich, and go to gatherings of the elite
but I've been to those and I hated them, was bored stiff
Couldn't breathe

But I am anxious--
A student next year will I be nearly all the time,
and it has been a long time since anything so freeing has happened to me or
frightening, because I've been used to a kind of hopeless drudgery,
but I will emerge with a new skill and live near the beach
and near one of my favorite places on Earth.
So what is there to be afraid of, really?  Only the grooves
the grooves that take me back to suffering
only in my mind

Those profiteers of animals, the devastating news I found
this summer,
They finally wrote back, after I told them exactly what I thought
that killing is not a happy ending
that animals have fear, and know when they are facing death
They wrote back, those with the big bank accounts from the Big East
who tried to stop No **** San Francisco to protect their friends at the **** shelters
They wrote back, those that we fought off, because we are in the right
and money and power and influence cannot stop justice and we are right,
not them,
And they finally acknowledged me, and the wrote back,
trying to show how kind they are
Their over dressed CEO walks down a carpeted stairway to give a woman her dog
and they wrote back
because at the end of the day I have nothing to hide
only justice at my side
and they can sit in their fancy Eastern clothes
and they can wallow in their power and influence
but at the end of the day
it's the little animal lives that matter, those they don't save
and justice is more powerful than any earthly prop
and it will win

There's sand in my car
on the seat, the floor, underneath the brake
I brush and brush but it just jumps up and falls back down
exactly where it is, as sand always did
as the sand from the Monterey Bay does
when I grew up and now
and I try to jog on the beach
but my muscles are so weak now
and I remember my young body
jogging and getting tight again within days
but I am home,
and that is what I feel more than anything
and the decades seem to be diaphanous, like clouds or
whispy spray, not so heavy and real
and after crunches in the sand
I am on the couch writing in a notebook
and I touch my hair and sand falls out
making tiny little sand noises as each particle
hits the paper
and I remember being in high school
when this happened all the time,
and sand will fall, and cling, and put itself on you
in your car, in your hair and into your life
until you can't live without it, must be near it
And my body will fade, and worse still my mind
but the sand will stay forever, tiny and infinitely monumental

They smile, and they attend social functions and are in pages of
a city's social diary, a mockery of a democracy
the Hearsts and the Bloombergs  and the others rolling in it
so their aging women can have too much plastic surgery
because time happens to the elites, too, and cancer and unhappiness
and the smiles hide the discontent and the slow death
and they are afraid of us, can't bear to be with us, this other species we are
and once, with my now X, at a fundraiser for his elite boarding high school
I listened to a pretentious speech that was so intolerable
underneath the canopy of a white tent in the middle of a gigantic field
with every grass blade evenly spaced and the same height, and the soil
filled with nitrite.
And the speech ended and the applause served as cover, like brush and I ran
out into the open air and flattened the springy grass
and I walked away because I could take no more

Crunch time, life time always in the way
Going through all the drama day after day fall away
things are never smooth,
I thought, I had an apartment, for my next move, now not
and I drive, hours and hours and fill out applications for threadbare little places
in a student's world, and there's a process and suspicion and a guy walking a dog
with a million tattoos and a beach about five minutes away and just give my this apartment today
So I can write, finish my great tapestry, my mastery of this storyline that has been in my mind
for ages, needs to be fleshed out, so I can get it out, of my head
and stop this disease, so please, let me stabalize enough inside and out to make it
put it out, on that computer screen,
until I have that, I am nothing.

Nearly four decades ago, nearly half a century
I walked Freedom Boulevard from
a lonely bus stop and as I drove there
the other day I saw a girl standing at one who could have been
me, in memory -- frozen

Would it still be there? One of my treasured childhood memories
Still living, not someone's brand new home, or a bunch of Villas in a gated community, lost
The land bleeds in California, but has started to scar over and forget the apple orchards
across the street from The Barn, where I used to ride, and now the houses are at least
covered in trees as nature tries to overtake the foreign, like in Cherenobyl

The big red barn sitting atop a small hill, crammed with horse paddocks now that
the little barns turned to condos.  But it is still there. Like magic, frozen in time.
The red barn, I walk in, it looks smaller than I remember
but the ***** brown cobwebs still cover the cieling and I am
nine years old again

Before I knew the boundaries of my gender
When I felt powerful, if neglected, strong and in charge
Before I knew the bindings of my ***
The limitations
I felt strong, and as I stand here,
I may as well be nine again, a single digit
And my fear melts away, and the lessons learned about my place
in the world evaporate
I stand, and look around at the barn nearly unchanged
and reclaim myself

The other day I sniffed
and it was me that stunk
do I really have that much underwear?
or have a been walking around all bare?
four weeks ago when this fury of busy began
I brought in a couple of fans
and stepped in one and hurt my toe
and still I know
the pain is there
and I sweat still and wonder where
my life has gone

and sore and explode
and heavy load
and I make it into a powerpoint
and I look at a zillion lol cats
and how to make a perfect flip turn
and Michael Phelps perfect stroke and whale length body
and sweat seeps into the couch
and it is still not done
my work is not done

There was a dog eating festival in a province in China
and tens of thousands of hapless dogs were brutally killed
and it happens all the time, cats too
why?
I want to turn into a superhero and pick up all the helpless creatures
who suffer at our hands
I want to protect them, but can't
I can't imagine how people can do this
No that's not true, I can

Endless at times
after swimming,
I dry off and there are droplets appearing on my arms
and chest...have I been rained upon? Many times a day
I sit in a cool breeze and grass clippings attach themselves to my legs
like coconut shavings to frosting
Working here, my laptop for companionship
hot machine highlights the labour of this
don't want to do this work
sweat, worry, will I finish?
she said, Nothing is wrong with your life
you're just taking classes you don't like
I was dissapointed

We lived in the 8th eme, near the Canal
A lovely apartment we couldn't afford
our usual lifestyle
I did the shopping at the cheapest store I could find: Ed
Ed-day,  you say, and they sell life's basics
like milk with the date stamped on it
and I'm careful about the date
We were Parisienne
Life abroad isn't real, it doesn't matter
you are not you, known exactly
your mother tongue is the lingua franca of the world
but a gulf separates you from the cares of the real
people there, a gulf of culture, experience, genetics even
I am an odd mixture of religions and regions, strange even for New York
There I am a different species, which is good because it helps my normal
worries stand still, and I am able to be a spectator on life
like a child, I
notice every little nuance of the French day and I am put on hold
I keep to myself, my own thoughts as I can understand
so little of what swirls around me
and that is a burden lifted
I am not homesick and I watch with the same curiosity
Americans on the Champs Elysses,
recognizable by the men in boxy t-shirts
and the women in athletic shoes
I don't speak to them, they are foriegn to me now, too
we walk over centuries of experience, that have given a quiet wisdom
to this place and I learn every day, and the mistakes of the past
are right there under foot or in a museum
the scream and rage of the past has echoed for the last time
long ago, and something has been learned from it
France was right, "we are an old country, and a wise one,"
right before the second Gulf war
we didn't listen
Life has slowed down here,
In America we have that energy, that desire to create and make it
and we run ourselves ragged, into the ground, alone in our independence
no time for strangers but here, our friends take vacations and boldly
make a bridge to form a four day weekend and are proud of it
and invite us along for trips and long meals
and visits to old castles, now over run with "the people"
who enjoy the carved gardens and angular pools as much as
any aristocrat ever did
and I don't want to leave
I'm learning so much
but mostly I don't want to be real again
I don't want to be that American person with problems and no
excuses of distance and language and culture
and no excuses of the need for rest from the rat race
because in America, no one admits to that need
And one day in Ed the expiration date on the milk
is past our flight date
and I freeze in pain
knowing the milk will sit here
long after I am gone

He lurks inside, he does, or maybe he's a she
I'm not sure, only that he is out to destroy me
At every chance he gets, especially when I'm stressed or tired
he takes out his special steely barbs and spires
and into my organs he jabs and cuts
every aspect of my life, he says it *****
I bleed internally, the lashing goes on and on
It's like listening to some bad grating song
turned up way to loud, played way too long
sung by an evil diva/master death metal punk it doesn't matter
the only goal is my destruction, to take me out is its injunction
and the parasitic quality of him, as he lives inside
makes it worse, he is a part of me, no lie
he makes me hate myself and want to die

The heat of the laptop seeps through the Israeli pillow on my lap
My life on hold for the last few weeks, now about to be completely gone
for this last week
I'm a performing idiot for authorities I cannot see
participating in this hot steaming mess in the company
of little picture icons of other "students"
I didn't have to move yet to take these classes
which is good, since they started before my job ended
but I am living an isolated farce, of pressure coming through my wi fi
is it real?  the quiet, sweaty summer, my plans shelved for now
all fun awaits as I read, read, write in little responses in little boxes and have
take some video, upload to little boxes and
the unimaginable happened yesterday, my wifi was down
so I called and looked and sweated and finally took sleeping pills
hoping tomorrow the laptop on the footstool would come to life
and it did, so the process continues
reading,  sweating
little boxes of information returned to me
How I long to just meet these people, once, in a room

Oh how I'd love that
and from a San Francisco organization no less
a month in the Santa Cruz mountains, no less
the most liberal city in America no less
and last year's winner has his picture displayed
and it is not innovative or interesting or shocking but all too predictable
Like something I saw how long now has it been?  twenty five years ago...
how many times have I seen this picture
a white guy, looking very much the suffering, creating artiste
handsome, like an actor, but not an actor, a creator of meaning
of art, and he can't smile, but looks away from the camera
mimicking an ad for J. Crew
it's amazing how only white men can write about the important things in the world
and the background, how many times before have I seen it
a graffiti sprinkled nowhere in an urban jungle
somewhere where preppy white guys never go
street art, street communication created by people
who don't see this concrete as an exotic backdrop for their egoistic posing
but as a part of their lives, as part of their meaning, their world
and he stands there, in front of it,
Mr. Screenwriter, the gulf of culture separating him from that background
spans the entire country, or an entire universe
but the implication of the picture is: he is home here
this is who he is and he can emcompass everything, since white men
as we know, have a magic ability to understand and synthesize everyone
all genders, all races, all religions
the rest of us are merely stuck in our own myopic little worlds
of gender, race, socio-economic status
but these spanner of time and space and human difference, they can be anyone
they can understand and represent anyone
So I look at the picture
and think, I could apply, but I'm busy during the blissful month of the residency
but how dissapointing, that I feel looking at this picture, now online of course
that it is the same picture that I looked at over twenty five years ago
pinned to a film school wall
in Los Angeles, in New York, in those edgy more conservative places
and it is the same guy.  the white screenwriter artist who will write about me
and others and it will be a lie
and we are excluded.  all the rest of the human race.
but what he writes will be exalted as truth
when I know, that no matter how time he spends wandering
the foriegn worlds of ghettos and genders
the one thing he knows, the only thing he knows how to write about is
white guys, because he is no superhuman
he is like us.  He will write about white guys and there will be
more films about white guys, who are supposed to represent all of us
but they don't, because they are only human,
and can only represent themselves.

"She is such an excellent student in English,
and I'd ask her teachers why her grades were low
and they'd say she wouldn't turn anything in.  And
it was true, she'd say this isn't ready yet, it's not perfect."
Perfectionism.  That's it.  I don't have it, God knows
but after 500 years of therapy I can look any psychological ailment
in the face...now she's dropped out of college and
he is not happy, my former boss,
"she says it's a 'gap' year" like the British Royal Family takes after
prep school, to be sent to rope cows in the British Empire,
Be an Australian cowboy and post to the trot like a proper Englishman
He's right, it's not a gap year.  
He speaks so quietly, he has judged me so harshly
pathologized me, behaved as if he is perfect and I am nothing
this is quite a large crack in the perfect facade
and I'm still here wondering
so I do what the courageous do and I google perfectionism and
before long I gather details of a childhood spent trying to have accomplishments
so your parents will notice you, a childhood where your feelings aren't important
an emotionally impovershed childhood lacking mirroring, positive mirroring because
the parents were to wrapped up in other things or they didn't really care and suddenly
I understand why this boss of mine would dig into my very soul
because he is so much like my parents
and yet, so afraid, because if I can google this,
then so can he, so why doesn't he when he's the one
with the degree in psychology, so why am I the one
trying to figure out his daughter's problems
and I know the answer
I want to solve mine
Is it the Jew in me?  That kind of willingness to look into that vast
horrid place of self hatred and take a flashlight even and look
at the ****** mess of a psyche and try to attend to the wounds
to heal, the be willing to walk in, squishy entrails cut off
and ****** under my feet, to try to sew them back together
to get the whole system working again.
I want to e-mail her the articles I read about her
I want to heal her, I want him to read this and know
that he is known and he was not such a good father
and she needs help
but no.  it is only me I hope to understand
as I realize I am in the cave, the immensity of my own psyche
trying to understand it, fix it, yet again

"You never get closure in an abusive relationship"
the advocate looked at me, softly, as she could waiting to see the hard news
soak in
the other women in the room were silent
Their "hes" were still around town, coming in and out
interfering, lying low, but at least paying attention,
abandonment is worse than punishment I thought
I was on the other side of the world, a reverse time zone
falling into the abyss
He took my wedding ring and engagement ring out of my luggage
then brought it up the stairs to me
and waited for the shuttle to come
I hugged him, but he didn't hug back, he shoved the bags inside
I was crying, he was stone cold, he payed the driver of the "sherute"
the shuttle to the airport in Hebrew, people stared but I didn't
care anymore, I was so used to people staring as he now
spoke to me and offered me a cigarette in front of the Mercez Horev, the mall
siting on the ***** concrete benches watching the line of people having
their bags checked before going in
Here I was smoking like I'd done my army service and gotten bored
and smoked to relieve the boredom and the stress
then something would go wrong and he'd get up, screaming at me
in English, and I'd run after
I didn't look at anyone in the sherute but I just knew they felt sorry for me
as we pulled away, after twelve years together, the last I saw of him
was him heading down the stairs
and now, the people at that job
I am learning new things in my classes
and, for one crazy moment I think:
I want to share this with them
so I write to my former boss
and that's the last thing he would ever want from me
He is the smart one, I am not, no one is smarter than him
He will never listen to me
Like I hugged my husband
not knowing he'd stolen my engagement ring and my wedding band
just like the Tel Aviv lawyer told me he would
the end. you never get closure in an abusive relationship

A pair of flip flops
are delivered into his lair
also known as my apartment
they have been coated with some dust
from alongside a lake, where wild things roam
then washed in the lake,
just for his enjoyment
and he tears into them, kicking and biting
in the morning, they are presented to me
in a new style: the corrugated look
a bug he's found on the patio and killed
is brought in and he sets it down in the middle of the living room
freshly vacumed rug shows it off well
then back to more stylizing
Last year's Walmart's purple flip flops
are now objects d'art
and now eating the expensive hypo-allergenic food
meant for the old cat, his foster father/mother
who used to chew off his whiskers when he was a kitten
and then, time for nap