passover you, pass over me, this is the meaning of freedom
after worshipping stone mummies, after working far more than i should, fucking around in pitch and mortar,
across the water, across the desert, over myself and past my dread, in the end, sublimely, not withhout fear, but in the midst of its dizzying lust, headswimming, in a pillar of fire and a cloud of cloud, volcano like, silent and as an orgasm, i will open my mouth and, covering in coriander, i will see your face

seven days of this bread that taste like cardboards, of bitter herbs from the bitter earth remind me that this is no simple story. freedom, even when given, is not given, to live in it, it must be earned, freedom is fraught with dangers. dangers of pharoah, danger of the red sea, danger of the desert, danger of murmurs, complaints, fears, not rising to the challenge, the danger of me

God, i need to eat another piece of flat bread, i need to be unleavened. time and time again, bits and pieces i am afraid of springtime. i lay out the house in green and fear hiring the yard man. as i mourned the ice and snow and ran from the darkness, now if wish the light would go down. always mistaking the future for the past, that is why i must walk around sinai, all day long i watched movies about jesus and remembered something i once believed though i didn't touch a roll and wouldn't take the leaven and i remembered how we were once told heaven will come in the future if you just believe but now, on this seventh night i must learn to live, right here, right now, in spring.

what makes this day different from all the others is how once i survived on the crumbs of questions and now i live and die in being, crawling in the shadows of a truth shadowed by a truth copied from a i know not what is no way to stand, with dripping nose and sleepy eye i go back to bed, but i go back, hands tired from sabbath cleaning, i go back living

this thing is stuck for now, but what yo uare telling me is how justice is the way, love the word, miracle the method and not the exception, it is still dark, i am still intentn on retiring. i still need those last three hours, maybe you can teach me in dreaming what you began to say in waking makybe the tortilla shell is as good as matzoh and maybe i will find you in the questions i didn't think were worthy. maybe i can finally give up leaven

on sabbath night i pray you pass over our sins as you passed over our rooves in egypt when in frightful salvation you made a differecne between the them and the us and this is the first tiem i have not rolled up tin the dust, blinking from incense and ceremonies tha in gulit i no longer udnerstand, honey in my hands and the crumbling of matzoh and the whining and the finding something new in cold and dust and the sutffed up nose, this is the mroning of the world and how, as she said, rapture rarely comes unalloyed.

i love my whole body. i love you
i love how with disregard to the smoke and incense you resist the ancient ceremonies for this one and bow down to flesh
i love how this sighing ends all question
oh, this is the third day of passover, and once i called it holy thursday
and church bells will wring this evening celebrating something i no longer feel
and once i sat on church floors and awaited jesus, but bored he never came and never more shall i
and this morning i will break the matzoh
i will not try
to force
i will live
with the force of april

april, you may not be the cruelest, but you are the coldest. despite the snow and ice, not minding the chill, all the things in april will follow the ancient order which is ressurection. all the flowers, hardy and yellow come up now, they don't care what the clouds say, in april we all believe in jesus, and we all know moses split the sea in two and the words and the words do not matter for they circle, haltingly, as does all religion, and unknowingly about the truth, stamped in red, stamped in goat blood, stamped in flatbread, in life from the dead
that god did it
god did
god did it

some place you in theology
but you belong in poetry
this night overflows history,
sticking to my fingers like
charoset,
clicking to my fingertips
in salt and butter
on the chicken
this whole half sleepy
day is like moror to me
and you were always
bitter to me
until the wine
and until the time
you made me remake
myself in narrow
places

this was hardly real to me,
does not taste to me,
these candles now burn for me,
put up this table that is soon gone,
give love to me and i will love you
too in the fruit and in the
roasted bone and over
salt water you will
go with me
out of these
narrow places

to make your own, to discover what is
yours is to mix this mortar of apples
and raisins mixed with cinnamon and
done in by cloves and stuffed with
honey,
based in the basic mincemeat.
to walk out of egypt for the
very first time is to suck the
meat off of KFC, wash those
bones and bake them dry
while boiling an egg,
then roasting and egg,
then holding it over the
fire to look like you've
roasted an egg

chicken leg

back then you were still pretending to be selective, you hadn't yet admitted that any old love would do, back then yo uwere above it all, you had a thousand choices, and that's what you said, and you had a long list, and you were only ling to yourself, and all your ruels made you feel special, and you rpetended the door was locked so tight, but if so why isn't it rusted ,and the lies you tell do not become reality, do the simplicity of your shame, and i saw him at the grocery sore and over maror and matzoh asked himif he would come over, big eyed and stupid he stumbled over what to say, and i turned around and let him--there ends a dream of two years--and now i am free, and your are still pretending to be selective, you haven't yet admitted that any old fuck will do

do you think that after this, by the magic of a bloody lamb, i can stop falling for the same old thing, moving in the same spirals? can i finally leave this tiny place? can i be real?
flatbread, flatbread, and tasteless, all it does is sustain you. right now that is all you need? how long have you tasted things that fill you and make you sweat and fat?
amd no, the magic is not in the lamb, the magic is not in the blood but in the man. and no, the mercy is not in the blood, the mercy is in the power to walk away, the mercy is in the new day which begins, pale blue, even now

in the season of our freedom, when there is still so much to do, just a few days before the pesach, the barbarian comes out in me. asked liberally, by good hearted religious people how i feel about that night when he swept over, when he wiped out the firstborn, if i am troubled, i confess that i am not. asked about how i feel that this word, this passover, also means compassion, but compassion for you, not for me, when asked if i am troubled, i confess, i am not

this jew grew with a cross around his neck into a tired man and i heard that god loved us all every single one the same, cause this is what he was, and so he sent this only son and now, i wondered would he send me just the same? and what love was that? and the love that loves without differentiation, the love that loves because that's what it is, that love the swamis and gurus talk about... how can that be love at all? i need a love that makes a difference. i need a barbarian jehovah who will kill a firstborn for me. i need a difference between me and egypt, a difference that can be crossed over cause that is what i see, i need the pesach for mine and me

oh how much dust there is! and oh how much
yeast!
and now that i've gotten older,
how much less i lose peace.
this quietness must be the
way i love you, this is the
way i trust you, this,
oh hum,
is the way i grow old,
i wanted to hold to these
moments once, now i learn
to live letting go,
and i don't take offence
as much anymore,
and i don't cry about
what can come anymore,
and i'm not surprised
by blessings, baruch acha,
oh god, my love,
like i once was

ONCE I WAS AS THIN AS EGYPT

can i be spreading out? once i was
as thin as egypt, now i'm
spreading out, roll over jeans,
roll over belts, and getting
wider by the milk and honey.
will a week of matzoh make
it better. cleaning an
cleaning i rid myself of every
wasteful thing and here,
this old mood ring, and thirty nine
packets of old duck sauce and,
do you need this cap from that
old pen? and then, what will you
do with half an old antenna anyway?
these are all the tokens of
never letting go, of one day
i'll use that again,
but the again can only
happen in egypt, and tonight
i am being freed of it.
in these next days, flat bread,
flat bread, oh stalte bread
and water, bitter herbs
and hard rememberances,
make me thin enough to
pass through these
narrow straights!

MIZRAIM

egypt is the opposite of space,
tyrrany of the pyramids of so
called logical thinking and
drinking bitter wine because
there's no room for water.
egypt is the inability to
dream,
and long after leeks and
onions linger i remember
you have always been
my wings and i,
crossing on water,
have always been
this Canaan

CLEARING SPACE

it is not all in order. it is in a little order.
it is not completely clean.
we are at the beginnings of clean,
to the middle of clean, and you've got
to begin before you get to middle and
the middle is necessry to get to the end,
and the end doesn't come till you are
ended to and that is called death.
So in this life, step by step we
move and i would say we move to
cleanse but no, we move to clear
the way, we move to clear the
way to we can move. because
life is not a penance like
the old Christian would say
and life is not days and days
of cleaning chametz, no i admit,
though my steps falter at it,
it is a dance

poetry's not precious,
i write it all the time
you don't think i'm precious
for you lose me all the time
pity is not love and neither
one is mercy
here, teach me the secret of loving,
letting me know,
battered as my heart is what
it is to let go
at nissan i tear the wound,
tear the wound, pick the scab
and in the season of our
freedom as for another
reason to burn the new candle,
defy anything that looks
like hopeless and open this,
life as it is with all
its quests and questions
and give them back to you

MOURNER'S KADDISH IN NISSAN OVER A CATHOLIC BOY WHO DIED IN APRIL

i am baffled by the mystery of your life
you sealed with a question mark in the
shape of a gun.
i am troubled by your sorrow,
by your young beautiful face still up,
soft blck hiar, soft heart,
i woudl suppose now gone,
now wrapped up in tendrils of not knowing
and the small forzen place,
where anger for god anger at god,
the tight no=knot in my head
of all these thigns that should
not be happening lives.
when i say the kaddish
for you who i never knew
who is as young as my little sisters,
hwo might have been my littele brother,
who wrapped himself in
smiles of secrecy,
i can hardly speak
yisgidal is the only thing i can say,
vayeskadesh is the only
song i pray, oseh shalom
the breath like the bullet
whole where life escapes
and God is the only word
every theology--jesus loves me--
stumbles about, hollow eyed
and mud mouth for an answer,
but aleinu god, shalom aleinu
is the only expression,
God is progression from
knowing little to moaning at the
knowing less, the broken, shuddering
confession that
i simply do not know.

RAIN LUST

There’s not going to be a soul to thank me for these dreams—I’ve kept
I did not make them up,
they fly on in
the din of weeping princesses fills this tenement
the lament of the drunk outside
becomes mine
whisky and wine
while I sit—while I lay on my back
naked—tracing shadows alone’
four in the morn—and light another
cigarette

ah—forget it!
you think the writing life is easy
how’s it easy?
No validation
this permanent vacation from the world
anyone else knows

And now again—I know love—which is to say I get laid
and curl up in the window
hands wrapped around ankles—to watch the rain roll
down on Reilly Street
I see one man below
—walking slow—to spite the storm
I learn
I learn the secret—life is lonely
No—only some of the time

When you came over the loneliness melted away
you said—you said putting your hand to my cheek—
give me your lonely—your tired—your poor!
thrust them into the door!
And in the dark I thrust them all night
My God! The door was so tight!
I imagine that a world was made in that explosion
I can’t imagine how you held me, my body tossing
the next morning your hand touching—that spot
—that bone—that place on my hip
—your arm tossed over me
your breast there to feed me.

And I thought and I thought
now there’s nothing else
Now—
I am really naked
and she understands me

And the bus rolls below on Reilly Street.

PASSING OVER

oh happiness, i wish that i was you again
i wish that i was thin and lovely,
fat with the promise of you,
i thought i had cast out all
sadness again, gotten rid of
every fear, you don't appear
with the winter but your dark
shadows come with sunshine,
i don't know that i'll find
the courage for the spingtime.
in the season of my freedom,
remember,
remember my fearsome deliverance
from my self. but there is so
much still i need to be redeemed from,
i need from so many things a savior
and a crossing fo te red sea,
i don't wish i still believed
in jeses, he alked across the water,
but he could only take himself,
moses took thousands of thousands
and jesus's daddy blew the waters
open with his nortisl,
i find i will need a god
who does the same for me,
takes me,
rescues me
from me

PASSED OVER

dicking around and all this dicking around
and all this fucking around and fuck all
this and all this wasted time and wasted
time again until my eyes hurt with
looking for the good thing and the
hopeful thing, until my back hurts
with the load of shit you have put on it.
i am afraid of paril. i am afraid of
the may flower, and now before this
hours up will come another hour,
the white yellow toothace of summer
mounts before my view, tiem and
time turning so that nothing
changes bu the color of my hair
and the thinness of my hair and,
wasn't it yesterday i was nineteen,
wiating for somethign to happen?
and now, look her, i am thirty four
years old? and this is the egypt
i hope to leave from? and
shouldn't i remember moses
was eighty?
and did israel,
long after it had lost hope,
finally get born
after four hundred years?

APRIL BOYFRIEND

i need a newness.
i need an end to this dreaming
i need an end to the endless fucking, all of this sucking, all of this putting up and putting you down and looking around for the next one who i can settle on, suck on, rock on, rambam
mishnah
i need the companion, i need the boyfriend, i need the love
i want that body, long and sweet, smelling of sleep and milk and earth and sweat so naked beside mine
i need the one who is there most of the time, if not all, who can give me some of this strength, when i have none
i need him to make eggs for me
i need him to share coffee
i need his stick dick inside me
i need to make him cum
i want to wash his floors
knit him hats and hold him when he is down
i want to go down, and lick
his balls with the base of tongue
and then about a child or too and
run the water outside in the backyard
while he plants bulbs in the backyard,
and we have barbecues in the backyard
and are so happy and then real hard
he fucks me deep in the backyard
and showers all his seed on me
and i need this
i need that boyfriend
i need him true
i need him certain like the lord our god
i need him till i'm blue
but since he's not here
i'll learn solitude
and at ten past five, with the knock on the door
i'll settle for you

APRIL II

Around midnight tonight, around
midnight to night
things have got to change
around midnight to night
this is the time when the fires
in all the houses of egypt
let me see
and all the crying in egypt
is a devil's symphony
i have choked up tears, too
i have a mourning and a moaning of my own
around midnight tonight i will lament
that i can't go back to my own home
the sunny days remind me of being
driven away
the loud music that the neighbor's play and
homelessness in my own skin
then it reminds me of all that has
not happened and
of the price you pay for living this life
turn over my skin, like the lambskin,
spread my blood across the lentil
and the door
gut me open like you did before
this is the time of my freedom
it comes in sungliht and evergreens
and it comes by way of weeping

APRIL

This
is the season of my shaking
something has taken me far from love and
certainty and in the springtime I tremble
mistaking rememberance for prophecy.
Lord so big, don't forget about me,
the quiet air is full of the noise
of what's about to come and worry,
old as the sun, dark as my old
smelly room, where you came to me
and they came to me and every bad
memory came to me, makes the time
of budding leaf and the pushing
root the season of my shaking.
as long ago in this time you
came to get a sorry people
out of slavery,
so now come to my
trembling heart
and worried mind and
in this too bright day,
set me free