Dybbuk out of Dreams 3.0

January 2018- This ebbing thaw will pass as well

*

List at the End of January

Snow coal cone lump ashtray pustule

shrinking in the corner of the parking lot.

(Ah….early spring)

 

Sound of clogged carburetor gagging on itself.

(Great…now you’ve flooded it)

 

Lost key trunk eye hole with yellow handed

long nick Phillip’s screwdriver protruding.

(Nope that didn’t work either…keep swearing)

 

False dawn slapping wind ganging away

slamming cheap tin bed frame freight train

ready to orgasm and derail.

 

Centipede shadow crawling measuring spoons

scurrying across the dingy white moon soaked linoleum floor

looking like a pool of quicksand.

 

Brown plastic garbage can rolling down the block

yawning in the gutter.

 

Air raid siren blast exploding

in a razor blade cable running through your ears

jerking your head off the sound sleep pillow.

(This was only a test)

 

Child’s dream speak night talk back lit in

orange dragon space heater steel teeth

hissing at the bars on the crib.

(Some childhood memories are best forgotten.)

 

Fresh creme of the New Year

curdling in the calendar’s carton.

Whose missing face is that printed on the side?”

-Another Rubber Eden 1996

January Letters 2012

 So soon the light struggles to return

to fill the new year wolf ticket sky

in a lingering tentative twilight

towards some vague promise of Spring

merely a rumor of rejuvenation

left in a hand written note

taped to a bus shelter on the corner

of 33^rd St. and Lexington

asking you in rhyme by name

 

What did all the years mean…..   …… ?

 

I recall writing those January letters

imploring you to reconsider

that annual ritual of tossing

the poet out of your life.

 

Now as you have finally succeeded

you still read this in stubborn justification

safe in the distance from these words afar

telling you exactly

what you never had the heart

to tell me

to my face.

 

Mute the voice

Blind the eye

drain the last pool

of affection dry.

 

What is written here now

has a place beyond words

where language is the

shallowest of vehicles

for sequestered emotions

scattered to the four corners

of isolation, exile

estrangement and banishment.

 

after you have left another

in so very deep

that the hope of a journey back

to all the lost moments are everything

that you can no longer keep.

Better Get Abstract 2015

*

The Dybbuk Dreams

It was in the first few nights of the New Year

when all promise and disaster were as unopened mail

that the past had a walk in his sleep.

The Dybbuk’s hands opened old draws

shuffled through forgotten pages

Pausing to repeat a line of a letter

here and there.

 

Ashes were stirred and long dormant old flames set free

to flicker. Then the night faces could dance once more.

Night faces coming back to visit shining

eyes to glow back into.

 

Another year rolling itself out like an immense black wing .

Your sleeping form swept along in this night flight,

those waking hours, now the specter, this was the soul

strolling hand in hand with the eternal freedom of

time asleep.

 

She walked once more upon the mores, in a chilly thick fog.

Here where she had always known that he waited for her

In between anger and consequences,

in this dreamscape of quicksand recall where mushroomed

marsh islands of what might have been.

 

They both returned to this shadow realm of still photographs

hung and propped in the endless stark arms of winter.

Here where the past stood naked and true.

Both came with small hands grasping deep into the heart’s

pocket. Each visited at different points

along the dream curve, with separate dependencies and

versions of the same story.

 

They left messages here for each other.

The last word over and over. The promises of reconciliation

and forgiveness. The sensation they shared of never being

able to meet face to face again, outside of this place

of half light sand deep grey pools. Always to return to

the same beaten path, in the corner of the dream.

This place where the images of each other’s faces

in those frozen photos snared arrested looks

and eyes of love and delight that once were shared.

 

They both returned to this place, every so often

to get a face full and

look down at the other’s footprints

left in the path

from the night before.

Another Rubber Eden 1997