January 2022

Yup- Our Dybbuk is back again for another swing at it. Plus what comes Next ! Updates pending later in the month.

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

NEXT !

                                      (For R.B)

The wonderful life Christmas is over

One tries not to be depressed.

Maybe re-read Brautigan’s piece

From 1963

Where he and his friend were

so depressed over Kennedy’s public execution

that they took pictures

of discarded Christmas trees

abandoned in the gutter

and then proceeded to get drunk

while watching a slide show of them later.

I get that.

All those rolls of left over wrapping paper

all about the place.

The lights that need to be taken down

before the neighbors start with

the “white trash” wisecracks

One thing you can say about Christmas

in this post modern area,

Once it’s over.

It’s dead.

A lot of build up.

A product orgy climax

And the day after ?

Forget about you

The day after Christmas

is like nailing a wood screw

into the back of an old friend

Who shows up once a year for a visit.

And as he walks out the door.

You slam and lock it on his heels

Hissing, “and don’t come back till next year,

You pain-in the-ass bastard.”

Thankful ?

Sure.

This year I was thankful I didn’t end up

in the paraplegic chair

in a nursing home in Baldwin

after that nasty fall

down the Cold War stairs

back in your hometown

that ended up with you

kissing some concrete.

Instead I made it back here on Christmas Eve.

Just in time to have a good cry

With Alastair Sims.

Greeting from Gridville   12/03