yOunger than some

When I was young, I thought the purpose was
to learn how to walk making no sound,
leaving no footprints, no marks ever
you were there

I thought the purpose was,
to be the best player in the game
you had to hide so good you'd never
be found, no matter how hard anyone
looked, or called — they lied,
they cheated, they wanted to win
the easy way; I knew how to win
so good no one wanted to play.
One time I tied a friend up so
ingeniously he almost died
rather than escape. I loved
throwing my all into something
where if you lost, you tried again;
but if you won, you never needed to
doubt.

I never understood
why there was cheating.
If you didn't like the rules,
just don't play.
And trying to win
took all the fun
away.
I liked playing;
not trying.

Games
I never played: you name it.
Games
seemed to be for
when you were bored, too lazy
to play without rules.
If I had to play, I resisted
playing to win.
I liked being surprised I
won.

"You did it on purpose!"


"What is the purpose ...?"


therefore, On Purpose ...


Arriving late to school
getting tardy slips every rainy day
taking so long to walk to school
saving worms
soft question marks on the sidewalks.

at 4
Burying a cigarette
as a gift to God
graves were where
people went to be
with God
after all, kites
got messages sent
up strings
a cigarette
after all, grownups seemed
to really like them,
sighing, lips pursed
smoke a thin dance of air

at 3
Remembering my first strange word:
vacuum
walking by a neighbor's house,
hearing the wailing whine —
the comfort of finally
having a definition. We
didn't have one.

at 9
getting an award
for helping compose
what became our school song,
the line "raincloud purple."

then a few years later,
earnest but memory failing already
helping a teacher write the words
down to a favorite song
and learning too late
that I'd made almost all
of them up.

first paid job
writing: a fiction serial
for our elementary school
mimeo newspaper, my own
words shaped by that
exquisite sharp smell.

at 4
creating The Bug Club
for all my friends
2- and 6-legged.
Even some 8.
And one-
footed snails.

Raising butterflies, cocoon stunned
crumpled beauty emerging
the breathless reward of flight,
cricket frogs from tadpoles
singing in my bedroom, hopping
up hallways to startle my parents
stumbling to bed,
my awakening to shouts

sitting out rainstorms
under the boughs of eucalyptus
forest menthol fragrant,
sometimes finding nest
eggs of feral chickens,
always abandoned, a
deserted still life

at 13
creating a detective agency
to justify my curiosity
validate my finding out

riding my bike to churches,
synagogues, cathedral
people staring, an interloper
eavesdropping but really
listening for someone talking
to God

at 8
loving to read aphorisms
the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld
realizing they, finally, could teach
how to live, the answers
contained within their wit
the first stirrings
of wisdom


realizing that the only people
I could talk to
were dead, alive only
in books


talking with bullies
talking them out of fights
with me, distracting them,
yes, but finding myself
loving the answers they gave
and the fragile friendship
that rarely lasted
the egging on of their
friends

Living afraid days
the raised voice, raised
hand, belt. Keeping record
but never knowing a day
without punishment, harsh
words. More trouble than
I was worth, for sure,
more than my parents
could understand, but
always forstalling
trouble became my motto

I never "got it"
Refusing to do homework
repetitive drudgery
of what you already knew
last thing on my mind
teach me something new
but don't waste my time

But yet the pain
the pain
the inevitable "teaching"
punishment
of being twisted to fit
the holes, crammed
and confused as everyone else
when the pain didn't work,
when I still didn't care
about work that didn't matter
to me. I only wanted
to learn ...

One of the things I never got
was how punishment taught,
one thing I never learned.
One line I never bought.
****

sAyings

Snow is just nature's way of allowing you, too, to walk on water.

*
We do not give birth to children; they give us our own birth.

*
We have a lot to forgive and a lot to imagine yet.
We don't need arts teachers; we need arts preachers.
Teach us what to do with our minds besides thinking.
Teach us that we are not our thinking.
Show us how to listen to what has no voice.
Teach us to witness, then teach us to celebrate.

*
Make your life a testament to beauty.

*

There was no Big Bang
there was a Great Shout
and the word was
the world was
what the world is
in that moment, is
in this moment
unfurled
what in the word is
begging
for grace
peace
namaste

*****

"Gods come and go, but prayer is forever."
— Yehuda Amichai


What can we offer to god, who has everything, knows everything?
What can we offer that is not superfluous, uninspired, is not
a lie?
"We offer the sighs of the heart."
— St. Gregory


3 poems by Yehuda Amichai

I know a man
who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there.
*


The sea and the shore are always next to each other.
Both want to learn to speak, to learn to say
one word only. The sea wants to say "shore"
and the shore "sea." They draw closer,
millions of years, to speech, to saying
that single word. When the sea says "shore"
and the shore "sea,"
redemption will come to the world,
the world will return to chaos.
*


Here in this wadi we lived during the war.
Many years have passed since then, many victories
and many defeats. I have gathered many consolations in my life
and squandered them, many sorrows
that I spilled in vain. I've said many things, like the waves
of the sea at Ashkelon in the West
that always keep saying the same thing.
But as long as I live, my soul remembers
and my body slowly ripens in the fires of its life story.

The evening sky lowers like a bugle call over us,
and our lips move like the lips of men in prayer
before there was a god in the world.

Here we would lie by day, and at night
we would go to battle.
The smell of the sand is as it was, and the smell
of the eucalyptus leaves
and the smell of the wind.

And I do now what any memory dog does:
I howl quietly
and piss a boundary of remembrance around me
so no one else can enter.

— Yehuda Amichai

pReaching to the Choir

Hello?
Don't get distracted; don't be misled.
You'll miss the point.
They want you divided, fighting
straw dogs they set at you.

What are you protesting...?

It is not by your patriotism that you support imperialism.
Nor is it by your pledge of allegiance that you keep flags covering truth.
And it is not by your vote or your note to the editor.
No need to buy your vote.
They have bought your life
with the hamburger and fries
you just ate,
the SUV and one-car-per-person lifestyle.
Who the heck taught you
you could "own" a home?

It's not just sweatshops cranking out Nikes
overseas. Check our own backyards.

This time the monster *is* under your bed.

They've bought your life and obedience
with the produce pickers, the maids, and dishwashers —
the parts you ignore,
the nuts and bolts (tape & glue)
holding our economy together.
They know you won't complain unless
it falls on top of you.
But by then, you'll think it's
your fate.



Poetry is not
a job —
but poetry is about
making a living.

It is your foundation
not your soapbox —
make it your sandbox.
Play at the edges of what
isn’t soft, what doesn’t run
away, and what drums
warn you about.


Reading poetry is like entering another world — a wilderness of image, sound, and symbol. But it is someone else’s landscape. Poems are powerful intimacy. Perhaps that is why “love poetry” works so well.

This new landscape is so personal, sometimes you need time to adjust, to take your shoes off, to get your feet wet, to feel the dirt and grasses between your toes, to know where to step and what to skip. When to jump and skip.

Poems are pure ice crystals. They melt slowly in the fire of your focused attention, quenching an unsuspected thirst.

But if you haven’t got that kind of time, then a guide is helpful — someone who knows the way in … and knows the way out for you.

The guide is not you. The guide can’t do the work for you. The guide can only point at things, or point at you. But the guide is not you and the guide does not take you — you walk on your own. Walk at your own angle, speed, walk don’t run, run as fast as you can.


We think it is the poem, the painting, we create …. But it is us, the art is our self. Art works to discover, to uncover the layers experience encrusts us with. To filter/find what is us, underneath what has been learned.

****