Poetry by Writers’ Workshop (2024)

she called me pumpkin

infrequently

on occasion

no rhyme or reason

didn’t even correspond to a season

pumpkin

 

i remember for some reason she said it often when i was 9

then over time

it subsided

until

 

on occasion, when i became an adult,

it came back

infrequently

no rhyme or reason

again, not tethered to a season

 

if i’m frank, i now see

my mom never said “it’s ok,” to me

or “it’s going to be ok”

mom as cheerleader? i’d never see that day

it was a universe when nothing seemed ‘ok’

but when she called me pumpkin

in passing

for that fleeting moment

everything

seemed ok

The swallows circle around in skies

over the Ummayad mosque of Damascus

It’s dusk

yet this is not a dream

and although I saw it 30 years ago

Kan Zaman

I still remember

30 years later

I still see the swallows circling overhead

Going home

I will later learn

these formations are called murmuration

Something as fun to say

as marvelous to see

 

I never made it into the mosque

It still haunts me to this day

I can’t seem to find a way to shrug it off

and say it’s no big deal

because

It is

 

Again, years later

I’d learn this mosque

This masjid

This House of God

Houses the relics

Sacred remains

of John the Baptist

 

Years later I would learn

That several spaces lay claim to his parts

but we are more than the sum of our parts

Years later I would learn

The details of an untimely death

The details

of an extraordinary life

He, who danced in the womb

in prescence of manifestation

of the good news in another

He, sharing that good news

Baptizing new believers,

with the gentle waters of the river

 

John, wearing a tunic of scratchy camel skin

Jean Baptiste, eating wild honey and locust

Yahyā in Zakariyā, preparing the way

John, Jean, Yahyā… they said you were touched

which is complementary or dismissive,

depending on who’s defining

 

But Madness is not hearing the sound of God

Madness is not sharing the Good News

with a sprinkle of well water

a measured dousing

a full bodied dunking in the river

the body, anointed by water

Oh to be cradled by you, like a new-born child

Reborn

 

Madness is not telling the truth

Meshugga is not calling out God’s laws

Lolo, is not giving your life to the Lord

But people still whisper it

Today, it’s called ‘mental health issues’

So many Avoid eye contact

with the Jesus freaks

and the hijabi next door

 

So what is Madness?

Not this divine locura

Madness might be sleeping with your brother’s widow,

mother of his children

now, your wife

(Yet women of long ago sometimes had few choices)

Madness is the end game of coveting

The desire unfulfilled, untended

Unending

Eternal

Madness is a mother living through her daughter

Unaware the umbilical cord that gave a lifeline

must be severed to not strangle, later in life

Madness is using your child

As a pawn

As a messenger

As a human shield

As a chip to cash in

As a way to raise your stocks

As a surrogate life to explore, as an escape from your choices

a sure recipe for a pie of regret

Madness is obscene wealth

paired with obscene power

and always being hungry

Madness is gambling, big, small or it All

Madness are blind spots that hold hands and obscure the view

Madness is offering a dancer

“Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.”*

Madness, is being unaware they can’t make their own decisions

Madness is being married to a puppet master

Madness is said dancer, asking mother “what shall I ask for?”

 

Madness

is the answer of wanting someone’s head

Madness is adding that you desire their head on a platter

Madness, is fulfilling the request

to show

you keep your word

 

I didn’t know that Yahyā was housed here in Damascus,

meters and lifetimes away from our parked car

I remember sitting in the minivan, waiting for our ride

While small boys with light green eyes

threw stones at our parked ride

 

But these boys would live

unlike Palestinian brothers, a country away

Occupied, defiled, reviled, punished

for simply existing

If that were my cage, I too, would throw a rock of resistance

 

Imagine that- in an open air prison, a small child will be jailed

for tossing a stone

Beaten, broken, battered, bruised

for giving asymmetrical pushback

to foreign oppressors

These children of Falastin may not live to have their own families

unlike their Syrian brothers

who likely have grandchildren by now,

if they survived the war that would unfold, several years later

 

I’m sure the news of beheading travels fast

John’s disciples asked for and retrieved his headless body

No oil to anoint

No last rites to share

But still…tucked into soil

returning to the earth

Ameen

 

This desire to care for our beloved

should be second nature

like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn

A calling, that cannot be unheard

 

I see you, Children of Rafah

Children of the West Bank

Progeny of Gaza

Running with limbs of others in hand

Body parts, in a bag

A girl’s bloodied jaw, dangles from her face

like a torn kite’s tail

You run, with lifeless bodies

Men cradle their dead, a hundred thousand Pietà, carrying martyrs made daily

This modern day army of Herods

This Madness of hatred

This unquenchable hunger of greed and power

This score that can never be settled by unbelievers of no faith

But the belief that they with blood covered, genocidal hands

are somehow still Chosen

Is Madness, indeed

 

The price for speaking up

In one’s faith, for Truth

As witness, remains

Today, the digital guillotine strikes

Silencing every advocate

Zip ties bind hands

from Hebron to Austin

A house burnt by bombs

needs no curtains

for non-existent windows

These drapes, now wrap bodies

the furoshiki, of the dead

Gaza has been reduced to rubble

Land of a hundred million stones

Ready to be launched by hand

Sailing in the sky

Swallows circling overhead

Alhamdulillah

I.

how to capture the now

is front and center

the irreplaceable gem

set

in the ring of awareness

the tapestry

of freedom and pain

knowing these moments

are forever fleeting

 

II.

i’ve wanted to write for weeks

i’m not blocked

i’m not stuck

i’m not lacking

inspiration

 

III.

the poems almost write themselves

in my mind’s eye

my third eye

needs no contact lenses

no correction necessary

no rewetting drops

theses odes, haikus, meditations

are wild like weeds

and manicured

like bonsai

i love them all

 

IV.

today i am pruning

clearing out the inbox

overflowing emails

on Thursdays

everyone asks for donations

from politicians

to tree huggers

earth advocates and protectors, of the sage grouse

i hear from women’s advocates, the muslims, the gays—

the rich family of humanity

all sending calls for action

calls, for aid

 

some are urgent

some are cloying

some use despair

everyone wants money

 

how exhausting is this world

of professional begging

i often prefer simply stuffing

the small vanilla-colored envelope at church

every sunday

this IV of charity is humble

heartfelt

manageable, yet subtle

 

tuesday nights, while driving to a friend’s home

i pause at the red light

sometimes i see this slight woman

who from afar resembles a waif

she stands under the freeway

small cardboard sign in hand

small dog, by her feet

‘hungry

please help’

the light turns red

i open my car door

(as my window no longer works)

hand her a few bucks like a baton passed,

at a summer Olympics

i drive away

before someone honks their horn

 

V.

outside skies are blue

outside

zebra doves coo

they fluff, they preen, they cuddle

the leaves of my ficus tree

(their home)

are emerald green

and Honolulu

she looks pristine

 

outside

the technicolor riots rival Glinda’s OZ

the beauty, is intoxicating

yet

acrid odors sail

not wafting on the air

not the non-acetone nail polish remover

from an at home manicure

it is the scent of moral decay

that hangs in the ether

an odor, that cannot be washed away

it is knowing

there are no adults in the room

 

VI.

it is bearing witness

to unimaginable crimes

when genocide shifts from abstract to fact

technicolor gore—enough to want to say “no more!”

the white flag is lost in translation

i can’t flex my privilege of saying “Khalas”

the crimes are brutal, wicked, demonic

and

daily

for months on end

we’ve gone from fall to winter to spring

last week, it was the summer solstice

i still scream, “Khalas”!

after seeing detached hand,

!”خلاص“

seeing a child’s face, dangling from their skull, like a mask

“Khalas”!

seeing the house of God repeatedly reduced to rubble

seeking the cornerstone in every photo and video of destruction

“Khalas”!

where are chorus, of Khalas?

when it is done, over, finished?

what is the end?

“Khalas”!

in what world it is ok to snuff out doctors

and decimate babies

“Khalas”!

daily, snipers shoot at children seeking flour or fresh drinking water?

the ungodly use trained attack dogs to maim an eighty year old grandma, terrified in

the corner of her invaded home?

“Khalas”!

“Khalas”!

 

VII.

it eats at the core of every caring soul

my screams feel silenced

while i amply the reality of cruel violence

and i’ve learned that so many

simply look away

indulge

in the seductive beauty

of a Hawaiian summer day

 

VIII.

a jet flies overhead

rumbles, in the sky

engines roar,

sounds like an angry belly

the sound lingers, long after it has flown by

 

my windows tremble

as does my heart

this hideous militarized state

now hosting a bevy of countries

engaging in euphemistic ‘War Games’

with bullshit terms parade

like “the Pride of the Pacific”

what a delusional sham it is

the myth that shared practices and tactics of violence

and such revelry makes ‘us’ “safer”

so i ask, “who, is ‘Us’?”

 

IX.

so again i scream into the sunshine

“Khalas”!

i write the unwritten poem

i watch the doves preen

i stuff the envelope

i rummage in my wallet, for the 5 at the light

i clean out the email inbox

change the nail polish

whisper

kyrie eleison

 

X.

i am the adult in the room

now

the revelation

no baton was passed

yet was respectfully acquired

the irreplaceable gem

found

i was the one

invested in the unicorn

in the world of sports

the famed 3 point shot

deftly launched

with only 3 seconds left

on the clock

the lynchpin

of a tied game

in precious overtime

when the anxiety felt by both teams

is likely the same

 

i believe in the magic of prayer

and of fingers tightly crossed

that a manifestation of intention

would help the orange orb launched

as we all watched

the official game ball

sail through the air

land ‘nothin’ but net’

is the true answer to a prayer

express delivery sent

 

i’ve seen these feats happen

time and again

in the company of family

and sports loving friends

when that last 3 point shot is all you got

hope riding on borrowed adrenaline

uneasy bets and emotional dividends

how quickly the game can shift

explode in mawkish cheers of rapturous joy

or the dark lamentation of defeat

at game’s end

winners expand

while losers retreat

Tricks

with bits of colored glass

settled in the recess

of a hollow tube

reflected in mirrors,

forging an order

that is not there;

 

in the mind

collide escaped dreams

and fragile memories

fallen from niches,

fashioning hopes and meanings

that cannot bear.

 

Yet gazing into the eye

of the cylinder

there appears a deep

Protean beauty, my beauty,

moving with all grace,

catching all that’s fair.

Down Westchester Avenue he tramps

Following the tracks of the El

Through the broken borough,

Trains thundering overhead

Like the sound of a might wind.

A new kind of Francis, this Francis,

Far from the fields of Assisi,

Far from the flow of nature’s beauty

Where birds and moon are family.

 
He walks with a flame of fire on his head,

The red wool cap pulled over his right ear,

Greeting confused people on the street

In slurred speech, each in native tongue:

Shalom aleichem! Buenos Dias! Grüss Gott!

As if he were chief host at Ellis Island

Welcoming novices into the New World.

 
Hardly anyone notices anymore

As he shuffles from block to block,

Singing “Glory, Glory Alleluia!”

Stopping to pick up a coded message

On a discarded candy wrapped or match folder

Announcing cryptically an apocalyptic end;

Pick a rose—“Yellow for the Holy Spirit”;

Smoothing out a piece of tinfoil—

“God shine on you and your family.”

 
Losing teeth, losing strength, losing time,

He plods down streets seeking a son or daughter,

Mother or father, human arms

To grasp, to clasp him in comfort and warmth

Removing the chill of lonely hallway nights,

Providing a household believing he is who he is,

Not drunk or drugged, but dreaming

Dreams belonging to old men.

 
Only phantom folds, not earthly embrace,

Cradle him, guard him, throw him

At the altar prostrate

Where, like home, without shoes, without shame,

Known beneath all knowing,

Drawn yet dreading to such holiness

He hears the gifting-gifted voices

Of angels singing in clear harmony:

“For he’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

What do you see?

Here the deep-red rosebuds yield to the

Pink umbrella, green canopy, and blue above

Playing tag on the ice’s refraction

Does their glory go in the gulp?

Or when memory receives an evocative kiss

Is its delight permanently painted

On the walls of our soul?

 
Maybe so but not always with a happy glow

Morning light shimmers sheen on the

Gold and purple plumage of my Hawaiian rooster

Whose early crow often awakens my hope for the new day

I wonder if the plumage on Peter’s rooster was black

For its cry stabbed him with a memory of betrayal

 
Memories see what we believe

Yes, the Holy Spirit of Love colors the ice in our lives with warmth

For in Her is life

And Her life is light for all people

Her light plays in the darkness and the darkness cannot douse it

So our memories are like linens lovingly laid in a Hope Chest

Refracting the light from our soul

Anticipating the moment we dress up for the New Day

Trash the ozone layer

And the angry sun glares through

Sucking moisture from all that is green

Kindling drought-dry-grass and timber

So any spurious spark ignites disaster

Wanton winds lob the sparks

Fan the famished flames

Setting California, the Amazon, Siberia,

And the edges of Africa

Ablaze with massacre

Meanwhile the hot oceans load the heavens

Then vomit monster hurricanes that

Dump deluge and spawn a vicious vortex of violence

Never mind

Burn the coal, pump the oil

Swelter in our hard-earned sweat

While our Big-Foot carbon prints punish the earth

Tempting nature’s natural revenge from eons of neglect

A grand fossil fuel finale

O proud railbird with a pale shiny blue crown

Standing for its rights, ready to pounce

Strong feet first armed with razor sharp claws

You are a character that would fit the American spirit

 
At three feet you must defend yourself and your brood

Against so many bigger and ferocious foes

Yet you are serene and unafraid in your stance

You well deserve the nomination of “don’t tread on me!”

 
A most American personage among Australian birds

You are an inspiration to us all in the northern hemisphere

Why don’t we all follow your example of peace in strength?

That which deters strife and promotes understanding.

Bears? What bears?

Marsupials we are

Cuddly we look

But we can be cranky

And even bite

So let us be in peace

Munching on blue gum leaves

You may look but not touch

We will all be happier that way

Who would not wanna be a wallaby?

Looking like a tiny cuddly kangaroo

They hop about with their cute families

 
All they need is a bit of safe land

And plants to graze, but therein lies

Their dilemma, it is not always easy to find

Such a nice and secure place in the outback

 
Their main option: hide from predators

Slithering snakes and crocodiles

Dingoes and big mean running birds

 
Oh, isn’t there any place Down Under

For our little friends to be safe?

O fluffy balls of orange yarn

Luminous under the setting sun

Growing up pup with its parents

Idyllic vision in this wild life park

 
Father dog engaging his progeny

In mock fighting exercise

While mother gets a welcome snooze

In the shadow of a blue gum tree

 
Living vision of yesteryear

Still available to us today

In the Blue Mountains

West of the great city of Sydney

O sturdy, sagacious wombat

Burrowing vegetarian marsupial

Hiding underground during hot days

And foraging during cool evenings

Slowly rearing their young

Minding their own business

 
Choosing the tastier plants to gnaw

They do not roam too far from their burrow

But do not like to be disturbed in their quest

For their food, peace and tranquility

O for us humans to be like-minded

And keep our peace with all our neighbors

O majestic powerful Sun

Protector of our rings of Planets

Provider of Light and Warmth

Rising faithfully every morning

When we turn back toward You

Allowing Life of Flora and Fauna

 
Providing spectacular blazing Sunsets

When our Earth side turns away

So most of us can rest during the nights

We thank you GOD for all this creation

Not yet knowing if we are not alone

Trying to be faithful stewards of it all

Pasta, al dente, porcini fungi

Salsa primavera, linguini

Olio de oliva prima, garlic

Gnocchi, mozzarella di bufala

This is the stuff of songs!

 
To eat or not is not the question

Who can resist all this bounty

Watering your mouth just in thought

What of the pizzas and calzoni

Many things to wrap your tongue around

 
Sure, popular foods are appealing

Calling to our gustative memory

With their sonorous sounds.

But there is so much more,

Sophisticated menus abound

 
There are days for simple pleasures

And others for more refined fare

All around the world can be found

Delicacies and hearty foods

Can you sing with a full mouth?

Come with me to play in unknown notes

strange musics to the ear,

new ways to sound

 
Come with me to seek in far-off climes

new instruments to the ear:

 
daf, claves, and rainstick

boha, cuatro, and tambour

 
tustaphone, tonton, amboesa

spoons, tambourine, and ongles

 
(ongles on the blackboard?)

(music for spoons?)

boha: that’s easy, “bagpipe” to you

 
tambour: you boom I boom

we all boha for the boom

 
Come with me to find in notefilled fields

more instruments to hear:

 
pandeiro, cajon, and shruti box

cornemuse, chirimía, and chalumeau

saz cura, oud, and qanun

 
Ah chalumeau, shall we dance?

Any old oud in a storm?

Are they for real?

Abundantly finger-fillingly tangible

(there is more music in the air and in heaven

than we earthbound may dream of)

 
Come with me to seek in curious corners

Some few more wonders to exclaim:

 
tintinnabulum and lyra de pontos

organistrum and organetto

duduk and Catalan oboe

hurdy-gurdy and psaltery

 
citole and setar

guittern and baglama

sac de gemecs and Irish bouzouki

Occitan oboe and vielle

 
shells and exaquier

crumhorn and ocarina

flabuta and heraldic trumpet

vibraphone and cuatro?

and yet clarinettes de roseau?

 
heralding the newness the shine

the glow the lightness of sound

showing us music to our ears

come with me to the new

2012-04-15

street chair man

I live in a chair

between the sidewalk and the curb

On the edge of the park

You see me you do not look

I look at the trees the passersby

Turn my back on the busy boulevard

And on the cars and hills

I do not see the hills

I do not lift up mine eyes unto the hills…

from whence cometh my help?

2013-04-07

bag chair man

I live in a chair

still live in a chair

will do so, what? to the end of time?

double bags piled up about me,

untold treasure under the streetlamp,

treasure that says “me,”

little savings from a long life:

if I leave my live-in chair

will I lose myself?

2013-04-14

rain chair man

umbrella under the pour and roar

one small umbrella my roof

against the downward universe of water

living water

am I not living too, in my chair

on the edge of the park

even with holes in my umbrella

you do not see me

wet through the holes in my boots

under the umbrella

on the chair

in the rain

2014-02-04

and today even the flowers are gone…

how to say this?

I know we are all temporary

but this? street chair man’s spot is empty

the chair is gone

all the bags, the man himself

all gone

the spot under the lamppost

now just bare empty dried grass;

that was yesterday’s news

and today the kicker: a bouquet of flowers

lying next to the lamppost,

does it sing?

does it weep?

what does it say to you and to me?

solo splendor on the high c’s

blaring, thrilling, rumbling g’s,

reeds, trumpets, whistles, bells,

half hour voyage through the night

with a thousand voices pealing

fingers and toes rowing

through the show-off swells of sound,

the powerful flux of dark and white,

bright lighting here and there,

the moon above the storm shining

teasing whispering blaring groaning

the immense wonder thunder

 
the player barely seated, flying

rapt to steer the course,

ringing, roaring, resolving

 
head bowed, eyes closed

twenty digits on the final chord

bringing the organ into harbor