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
Rubbereden 