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

there will be no explanation for this,
and you can try, yes we all can try,
but there will be no soultion
and all the meditat-tation,
is just a way to get the hump
is just away to get over the hump
and there wil lbe no prize for this
and this is not the time for this
and there are not enough angels,
not enough angels and not enough playgrounds for this
gorillas are pissed and ain't you in the mist
but te reaisl and the raisl and the raisl
stretched a hudnred miles, over hills and
over lakes and over... rills and whe nshe
walekd the rail and when he walked the rial,
and when she was fafe and couldnt' away when
the car came down, the baby di come donw,
cradle and all
and won't you come with me?
and there will be no explaning this,
no making up for this, not enough reasons
never anough tears and wouldn't you be angry,
wouldn't you be angry if there was a reason,
there is no, there is just the living,
and then we hope we pray for the
singing, and then we pay,
and i say,
telling you in truth that
there will be no
explaining this

RAILS

you too old, the coffes gonna get too old and
the train is running down that tunnel,
my feet hurts so bad, and baby,
don't you dare get mad, there are just too many
pigs in that blanket
and i sank it never knowing if you loved me
the train went high, across the sky and got
stopped at loyala and paulina and the 747
for the old woman out of her mind
and i was stuck in air,
you don't know how often the msoek will grow
sky in my eyes
grey in my eyes and smog
in my face, my back hurts in the palce where i
lived for
you
and where i lvied for me, all along the rails,
all along the rails
and to make this life a song, to make this life
a song, before we give up, facebook and give
up and post up a smile, bitch, give me a smile,
and your first born child, posted on a facebook,
given up a srapbook, and don't you cry,
cause when he jumped, when he jumped,
you knew he wasn't gay
and so its okay,
but don't you cry...
but most of all
baby don't you lie

i bet even if i didn't tell you,
if i didn't tell you...
and if i didn't tell you
i was having fun, would i still have it
and if i didn't tell you that
in a burst of lust i pretended
i made love to you and you
never know that everything
flowed out of me onto my
hand onto my bedsheets
then when we meet,
is it still an affair,
at least on my part and if i
keep it to myself, and if i
keep it to myself, am i still alive,
or do i have to prove it to you
do picture books pick up where
memory left off and can i find you
and can you climb inside me?
not long ago you came to me
all in wonder and i wondered
about you and i came to you
and spread my flesh across you
and all my mouth could not take
you in and all of god could not take
me in and so i got a new one,
and do you remember by the old moon
how i loved you and how
we moved together,
tethered like that,
time out of mind
and how i felt you,
and how i knew you?

i spent late until last night planning and
planning and building plans to spill into
plans and the nweave into plans, fine plans,
fine bricks laid from my very insides,
like any grey old spider, and then at
the end i lit a fire, small, on one stick
of incesne, and with that and a lit candle
cralwed into bed, and the magic of
bedtime makes me sleep and the sleep
wipes aways everything and washes it
anew into common sense, and on the
shores of such a palce i see what is
necessary and what is not, and what i
need is you ,and what i need is to
remember and what i need is to stop
fretting and remember it is too
cold to go to chicago, and i know
that i still have to pay my phone
bill and one by one these things
are liek rosary beads, but now,
if only one by one, ticked off
of my thubm they could fall
into the sea and the nbecome
water to become
salt

ARISTOTLE

one three four and five
come and hide
and can you stil lbelieve,
that i am still alive? after all we've gone and all we've done
and all we've gona and done
and no, i do not believe i am like aristotle
my head hurts, my eyes hurt and i, i've eye have
got to take it easy, i've been up too long/
and i can't do it all. i've loved you too
long and all the dogs are barking, but will you love me
one tow three and five
you are still alive and can you tell me where
we go when we hide
and i had lots of money, i felt so damn rich,
but i didnt have no sense
and i lost all of it, i lost all my sense,
i lost all my senses and did i mention
i lost you
my tangerine ball
all of my ball, i dropped the ball, when i a stopped
sweet tangerine, orange and honey, laid down
the money,smeared it over your body
and i know, that you know, we all all know
goddamn plato! and you better not call,
you better not call me
you better not call me aristotle

i can't go
baby when you snort that blow i want
to be with you
oh, jaime, your were just so pretty,
a honeybabygoldsuperfly
i deny i can't deny you
on the peach, out of reach,
oohlalala superbeach wenebago
that's how it goes and will
you be there palm sunday?
in your wedding gown with a
catholic frown and palm leaf
up your... banana? oooh lala
and don't you love me?

and i told your brother he could pluck me,
in the house on my stomach on the afternoon he would...
and there was no wedding gown,
there was not going down only the look on emily's
face ahhhahhh virgins in the yard,
virgins in the yard and ain't it
hard to find the place between my mary and yours?

i can't go when you snort that blow, you know i want to be with you
on the florida beach, but baby you were out of reach like the sky
and the sky was purple,
purple as his sex,
purple as those balls
purple as the fall of innocence and royal,
purple as the sun
purple as the plum i
held in my hand
when i held him in my hand
and oh, he moaned.

ASHERAH

running through the woods chasing witches but
who will cookamunga my vacation?
and running to the dell to tell the bridgebuilder
your name but don't you remember the same
don't play that game where you say you don't
know me. don't tell that lie where i fly in
a cloud until i burst all over your hand,
we're all bursting over your hands

and what she commands...

running through the woods chasing bats now,
do the mushrooms grow, baby do the mushrooms grow?
and i am sick of sitting here sidesaddle or
honey baby do you know, honey baby do you
know and where's my tomato

and are you not hiding and what she commands...

ju-ooodah, virgin mary, virgin mary, with a touch
of terry-gon and spice

cause what she commands...
what she commands...

squeeze your need, wring your need,
squeeze your... ah,
until your seed pours on my hand,
slicks my hand.

well what she commands....

i am fat and tired and sick and mired with
too many cigarettes and too much gin
and the doritos that pretend to be real
fool and my belly is hanging over
this belt with the residue of
the night and the not enough sleep and here,
early, i come to meet you and the edge of
the day and won't the world stop turning?
i am thirty years old and three and
finally i am old enough to know
i am still young and stored in here,
in those toe, and in this one old
roll of fat is that two more hours sleep
will get me where i thought prayer
should and than an hour of answering
the temptation of your,
kissing me up and down is worth
three of meditation,
pushing the body
away with a frown,

i am dizzied with the need to stumble off
this roller coaster, stomach still
reeling with the feeling not,
that the earth is moving,
but that i am commanded to move
and you are still standing still.
i beleive that all of this talk of
god's will and of your destiny
and of my purpsoe is all
foolishness.
God put you on thiis earth to,
God put me on htis earth to,
this is meant to be. no, see
we are placed, hurled, tosses,
spewed out in blood onto this
world's realm to breathe it,
and grasp it and take it
and make of it what we will.

because you sit on the train in the rain
on an L stop texting like a teenager
though you are at the door of thirty
after awhile i ingore you
either my messages drop or you ignore me
whole days pass after i've left
messages on your phone and you ignore me
the god who made the skies you
ignore him
and then you wonder why you cry
and you ignore it
and so at the last foolish message
i get up, and don't even deign
to respond, and maybe the reason
you say there is no god is
because he sometimes shakes
his head and like me, does
the same

stop worrying
do not be afraid
god is all around you
don't try to control of cling
love is all around you
in the springtime of your life
let go and release
this thing you
ve been holding onto wasnt worth it
this dream you thought you'd
forgotten, never wind away
in the past, like a wound,
liek a splinter in your flesh
no is is floating all around you
and as you let go of
everything that bids you hold
you will see
God is all around you