My Enemy (December 12th, 2024, New York, NY)
My enemy
Is not like you or me.
Savage that he is—
He is no man
Of flesh and blood
Who can be shot from a distance.
He is no man
With loves and dreams,
A mortgage, or a fantastic collection
Of stamps.
No, my enemy
Is a white balloon,
Filled with lukewarm sugar-water
And red dye #4.
At first, his face
Is playfully hateful—
No face at all,
Whose gaze, in its ugliness,
Threatens my right to open my eyes,
Whose bulbous, vulgar shape
Practically begs to be popped.
But my enemy, you forget,
Is no man,
Who can be shot from a distance.
He lives too close,
And I must hold him in my hand.
So when I venture to prod him
With a thorny branch,
Or a serpent’s tooth,
The killing is not so clean.
I am splattered with his contents,
My oxford shirt
Soiled with wet,
Which, at first,
I think will dry
With the rising of the sun.
But at daybreak, I see
My shirt stained with red,
As if I wore a second heart,
And it sticks to my skin
As scripture might stick to a parchment.
Worse still,
Though I always took care
To keep him in my left hand,
Now in my right,
I feel that awful, grainy texture
Of latex between my fingers.
And as I catch myself—
Reflected in murderers’ garb, passing by puddles
And storefront windows,
I see that my square jaw has rounded,
That my cheekbones have disappeared,
That, more and more,
My face is not a face at all,
But that same balloon.
My enemy
Is not like you or me.
He is no man
Of flesh and blood,
Who can be shot from a distance.
For in killing him,
He has entered me,
And will never leave.
Perhaps—
He was never outside me
At all.
~
The Marching Band: A Meditation on the Omer (May 15, 2025, New York, NY)
To avoid music
During these days of Omer
Is impossible.
Sure,
You can lock away your headphones
In the dark square drawer of the law
Hide away from concerts and weddings,
Or hang up your guitar by its strings
On the highest branch of your cedar tree.
But,
As sure as daylight
Or the Angel of Death—
Music will find you:
In the Muzak opening for the drugstore intercom,
In the ringtone interrupting your rabbi’s sermon,
In the saxophone playing dreamily
On the other side of the park—
One flees from music only
As one fasting might flee from a flood.
To abstain from music, then,
As one counts down to Revelation
Is not to go like Moses
In retreat up the silent Mountain,
Is not to close one’s ears
To the song of the world,
For one cannot truly close one’s ears
Until they will not hear anything again.
To abstain from music, rather,
Is only to abstain from choice—
To give the radio dial up to God,
To stand still as the floodwaters rush on,
Falling backwards as they sweep you off your feet.
And now,
As I wait at a bus stop
In Downtown Ithaca on a Sunday afternoon,
A marching band sets up
In the pavilion across the street.
As they begin to play,
I do not run for righteous cover,
But stand there waiting
In submissive transgression
To hear the song that I have been offered.
I cannot put to words
What it means when music finds me
But in the blaring of their trumpets
And the flaming red of their uniforms,
I hear a faint word echo
Down the sloping stairs of the pavilion:
I…I…I…