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The Blood Test
Watching in awe and wonder
As a well-trained woman
Named Light
Who makes her living
Washing her hands
And putting on thin blue gloves
To pierce veins leading back to the heart
Asking people to repeat their birthdates
To prove they know who they are.
My blood is rich
I am rich
Still, like my blood
The challenge of moving
From where I was
To where I must go is real.
And the ventricles must beat
To take the steps needed
To reach the bank, the grocer’s,
The transfer station oasis
Where I separate garbage from fact
And am then ready
To journey on.
POETRY
The World is Both Burning and Blooming – Karen Salmansohn
You get the bad news
and the sunrise in the same day.
You cry over the headlines,
then you laugh at a baby
wearing a hat shaped like a bear.
This is the dual citizenship
of being alive.
Rage and reverence,
Grief and grace.
You are allowed to feel both.
You are allowed to scream,
& still notice how good the soup is.
You don’t have to choose.
Let it all in.
*******
Editor’s note – In a world that breeds despair joy is defiance.
Poetry
The 80 Year Old Virgin
The 80 year old virgin
Needed quite the shove
Though it’s true that she had known of men
This time it seemed like love.
It’s quite a tender story
I’m not sure of where to start
But if you asked our heroine
She’d say it was her heart
Or if she’d really let you know
She’d make mention of the gate
The one that yielded down below
On occasions that she’d mate
And there were all the offspring
Numbers one, two, three, and four
And physical penetration
Both in and out the door
But still the sense that this was new
Pervaded her whole being
In ways they say that once blind folk
Newly report they’re seeing
It started in a yoga class
The sense that this was new
For even those of 80 years
Can see they’re not quite through.
A tingling I think she’d say
In parts that long lay still
An opening of her heart and thighs
Quite vigorous and shrill
A pounding of the vesicles
An awakening of the senses
I’m sure you know at eighty years
She long since had her menses
She’d said goodbye to thoughts of love
She’d music as her passion
But this was more than notes or wishes
This wakening of her mind and fissures
A quickening to the words and deeds
That spoke of hopes and parted weeds
She said she’d never felt or known
The ways she’d laugh and how she’d moan
It’s all quite new, exciting, fresh
The joys she felt in mind and flesh.
Take me, she said, though surely shy
I’ve left clay soils, I’m flying high
I’m frightened – sure
Of course that’s true
But this is real, these feelings new.
I never felt such passion or urges
Nor sought relief from shrinks or sages
I just accepted this as fate
And I was sure it was too late
To think of love in quite this way
As to her virgin heart she’d say
I love my kin, I’ve let men in
But here I am, it isn’t sin
I’ve throw away all fear and guilt
I lay quite open on his quilt.
POETRY
A Visit to the Cemetery
I visit the local cemetery today
And pick out my gravesite.
I have visited and walked at this cemetery before,
But had never imagined spending eternity there.
I go with my son
Who is visiting from the other side of the continent,
Speaking of other sides.
The cemetery borders conservation lands
And we pick out a spot near a young oak tree.
Not so close as to disturb its roots
But close enough to feed her,
Having chosen what is known as a green burial
In which I become compost
In proximity to the Earth which bore me.
At one point, my legs became numb
And I lost my balance
Reaching instinctively for my son’s hand
As he helped hold me up
Which he’s so often done.
We talked about gravestones
And made light of inevitability and loss
I visualized being brought here at some future date
Laid to rest and covered with the soil I adore
While dozens of crows called out
Welcoming me to the neighborhood.
Just not too soon I hope.
(c) brt 03/26
POETRY
Two poems – Yehuda Amichai
“The Place Where We Are Right”
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
“A Man Doesn’t Have Time in His Life “
A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.
Poetry
Boplicity or Jimmy Throws a Houseparty for Huey Newton – Daniel B. Summerhill
| inertia’s at the front door lobbying for a way into the funk but packed the wrong tools, left blues back where bebop jumped over the hammer. sold God’s imagination short. now we’re here dancing again, Bessie’s song got my hips loose & what goods a revolution without a two-step? beloved, there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there tonight, in Oakland, we carve up maplewood in steel-toe boots, stomp keys into the myth of whiteness. uncle sam’s teeth rattle. Huey clinks the bars with Plato’s Republic between here and LA, conjures the one & three count. american chaos. bass haunts the dichotomy, counterproduces the violence. troubles innocence. tonight in Oakland, the party is everywhere & we cant distinguish one riff from another. black smoke funnels out the attic & the lamp shade’s crooked from the kickdrum beloved, (i said) there’s a party tonight & everybody gon’ be there i’m trading in my gold tooth for a hand grenade at the back door: morning glory, milkweed, poppy. the rest have names too, distinct & communal as sin. would you believe me if i told you miracles were small enough to hold? scorched amber. night blooms. forgive me, sometimes the light blinds me to the light. beloved, it’s a party tonight. everybodys here |
Poetry
Who Says Words With My Mouth? – Jalal ad-Din Rumi
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
Poetry
We are the Trees – J Raymond
I see now, growing old is a luxury.
We ought to focus more on aging gratefully,
than gracefully.
Life isn’t a tree we’re meant to carve our
name into the trunk of.
We are the trees,
and life leaves its mark upon us.
My body will betray me
long before my spirit breaks.
Each wrinkle, a well-earned reminder of all
the ways by face wears happiness.
I’ve lost too many people,
seen enough lights snuffed out early,
to walk these roads begrudgingly.
Or with envy.
Or with anything other than appreciation.
I’ll take every step left affectionately.
When the day comes,
feed the earth our flesh and bones,
knowing that from where we lie
love grows.
Poetry
Another Planet – Dunya Mikhail
I have a special ticket
to another planet
beyond this Earth.
A comfortable world, and beautiful:
a world without much smoke,
not too hot
and not too cold.
The creatures
are gentler there,
and the governments
have no secrets.
The police are nonexistent:
there are no problems
and no fights.
And the schools
don’t exhaust their students
with too much work
for history has yet to start
and there’s no geography
and no other languages.
And even better: the war
has left its “r” behind
and turned into love,
so the weapons sleep
beneath the dust,
and the planes pass by
without shelling the cities,
and the boats
look like smiles
on the water.
All things
are peaceful
and kind
on the other planet
beyond this Earth.
But still I hesitate
to go alone.
