Orion's view

Edited final version

I am trying to be patient as hell.
but Time keeps her clock at a distance.
I cannot read the hands on her skin,
but can feel the burning of her breath etching doubt onto my eyelashes,
blinking ashes of you onto the cold worn floor.
If I watch closely with eyes closed
I can see how the fire began,
and remember it all.

You make me want to play with flames,
burn our story into the atmosphere
so that even the stars can be a witness to how this happened.
I want them to see this twisted pattern,
so that I can be told by Orion,
- that I’m not crazy for loving you.
But this
is not your poem.
Do not dare think I’d give you something so fragile.
I will not count you among the constellations in my heart just yet…
but you’ve made it far enough into my sky
that you’ve created for yourself a patient audience
with my own stars.
They are listening to your image,
and watching your echo drift further away
We sit on cold concrete steps
in the middle of everyone else’s life
and I start wondering
if we’re not there because the ground we stood on
seemed too soft for this type conversation.
I know I’m loosing you when you start to avoid my smile,
…because it makes you smile.
Subways rumble their morbid song under our steps
but give no more security than the ground
we’ve refused to even try to stand on.
If I knew how this was going
I may have been able to blindfold Time
before she could steal something away so precious.
My stars are listening to your heartbeat
but none of them are willing
to chase after your hallow trail of uncertainty
so bright, they shine hard against such a pointless journey.
I will not follow you, you are not yet my Polaris, or my Sun.
Your path seems backwards to me
and I will not get lost after you
I only face east and move to the beat of my own dreams
and without you..., it would be no different.
I would still inscribe my life deep into history,
with happiness as my knife.

I just believe it could come out beautifully fascinating
If there were a collage of you and I
scratched lightly as stone relief
I against the path worn away by others.
You give me outlines of footprints to count on and wait for,
and even they are in the wrong direction.
You are lost in your own story,
and writing with an eraser held too close to the plot.
We are not a legend, or myth,
we will not remain simply because we existed
and so -
I write poems to watch how they burn
I’ve seen how paper can catch fire
but learn to fly in it’s last breath if you give it the chance.
…if you give it the chance….
and so for this reason
I find beauty in the fire Time has not captured.
She hasn't found us yet,
and if you would stop looking for her
we could watch something soar,
and smile because we set that flame.
and maybe
it isn’t a good idea for us to play with these matches anymore
when you don’t even know if you want to burn down your own shadow
because it too can follow you into forever.
But in the sun,
I’ve found our outlines match
along sidewalks of what we didn’t plan to happen.
And there is little left other than a comfortable silence
between your smile and mine
and never before have we needed anything different.
Happiness reflects art into the palms of our hands
making the Earth blush from her success this time around.
So I'll blink ashes of you to the ground
and trace the after image of your terrified shadow
pretending I could paint the future in invisible ink for you.
Remove your imaginary timeline so that you could realize
we write it for ourselves.
And nothing is so indelible that it cannot be worn away by Time herself
or the choices we make.

She keeps me company while I wait for nothing.
Her clock hands lay uncharted moments in my mind
And I start to wonderwith each 'tick' that resonates with the echo of what
I already know…
...if I should not ask Orion to tell me the real truth.
I believe he’s waited as long as I have to say that;

any love is always crazy

And Time herself knows nothing more than how to etch doubt
Into the eyelashes of wandering lost hearts.

Colombia

I've have had a few friends, and my sister ask me for a copy of this poem.
so here it is. It is for my sister. *I love u.*

Last night, - mi queirda Colombia, – I deam’t of heaven’s apology
It came as raindrop tears of ice and sorrow
The heart of water would be jealous of it’s beauty as it fell upon the world
from clouds constructed in the shape of time
Etching it’s self into the open wounds of hatred
It pierced holes in the armor of men
who’ve before been protected by greed and stolen wealth
collected with hands red stained with the blood of children
She came down in sheets of crying eyes
and answered for the land of her people
waves crashed upon the steps of the white house
drowning the stone fortress of Washington
leaving the lawn of the white house covered in revolution,
She came down in pieces of history
stinging Americans eyes with the guilt of 3 entire centuries
as anvils dropped on the pedals of daisies beneath the heavy weight of truth
Justice finally fell
and I felt her on the skin of my conscience
And woke instead to whispers of presidential speeches
In his words the past voice of 43 previous serial killers
singing the praises of God
while leading our nation to believe
that what we do,... could not also be called terror
Our Government foreign policies
have invaded history with weight of ten thousand burning bodies
Carried on the backs of children
too young to see the slaughter of their future
in the hollowed eyes of their mother

Let me show you the back streets of Cali,
let me lead you in their wake
so that you can watch them they take their burden to the fields
watch as they bend their backs over double
to support the force of US intervention
Forever shaping the vertebrae of their small spines
into permanent arches oppression
THEY pick the beans that travel to your lips
through star bucks flavored comfort
and yet you refuse to call them Americans
because their blood flows south of your attention

But let me show you the village of Bello
In the early light of morning the sun kisses the leaves of the coca plant
cradling it’s unhappy story in the heat of her fingertips
The sun cannot save Colombia
any more than it can rise tomorrow from the west
and so she too must watch as airplanes drop acid burning chemicals
Akin to Agent Orange,
color the ground with deadly white death
masked as a weapon against deadly white dust.
breathed in by people’s lungs it burns holes in their organs
This poison is not intelligent and does not discriminate between
A coca leaf, potato leaf, or a little girl’s skin

Let me take you to the home of a farmer
Who’s land has been slaughtered with the toxic echo of
American 'assistance'
Unable to grow food safe for consumption
he is forced to produce the only illegal crop
that will keep his family from starvation
But he stands on the land
that holds oceans of wealth beneath her turbulent surface
Running though the veins deep in her mountains peaks
is a liquid black blood our 'president' craves like an addiction
We are willing to hook up and IV to Colombia
to channel it straight from her heart to our cars
We’ve Planned Colombia into the war on terrorism
Stolen her breath, and forced her to scream

But I will take you to the streets of Bogotá,
and show you where my family was from
I want to show you what terror really is
I want their children to hear you say that
we are not also terrorists as they cough blood onto the sheets
America, I do not absolve you from this truth
and so the next time you take a sip from your coffee cup...

… I hope you burn your tongue.

copywrite ©. 2006 all rights reserved by author

Family Death

I am sorry for not posting for so long. I will get back to this soon.

for now there is only one thing to update.

R.I.P - Judy Lerner 5-24-06.

You will be honored and remembered in my heart for the rest of my life.
I miss you more than my tears can tell.

spell it in heart beats please

I'm waiting for my Dad to call me in a few moments
Counting the flowers on the lawn across the street
The way I’m counting minutes inside my head
He’s calling my aunt's house for the update
Like news reporters do
But, with dignity
I’m happy to be outside,
letting the sun kiss my eyelashes
breathing in the spring...

The breeze is my rescue today

it came across my skin
and carried me away from everything
into it’s own universe of nothing tangible
where everything is spelled in heart beats
I feel whole again
Even for a moment

life is hurting my soul hard right now.

My Dad is breaking
And I’m collecting his pieces
In little boxes of folded security
I promised him I’d take care of myself
Because he told me
If anything happened to me
Right now…
With everything as it is…
His life would be gone.

He doesn’t mean he’d kill himself.
We don’t really do that sort of thing
Our family is too practical
We’re Jewish – we don’t like to waste.
But I knew just what he meant.
The way you know when a child says -
They’d just 'starve with out a snack'...
You know they’ll live
But also you remember that feeling
When you were 5 years old –
where you were convinced you definitely would not.

It’s not too hot out.
Just right.
Makes me think of the three bears and goldilocks
the way I sigh inside the perfect temperature
It’s just right.
and I read a lot of children's books.

This is so hard.
This counting of flowers and minutes
And each one only makes me worry more
And at the same time…
The ticking of days going by – slipping by – and even being lost,
Tells me we'll make it through - like we always do
we are a resilient family.
we can do this.

We will be less incredible without her
We will be less beauty once she is gone
We will be one less angel
One less branch
One less petal on the flowers...

…across the street – there is 34
35 if you count the little one under some leaves
My aunt would like these flowers
Her backyard is beautiful.

There are more flowers in the yard than we have family
and by a lot
And I’m happy they are there
Grass is not always enough
and the contrast of colors - the purple lips of each flower
Makes each member of my family more real

As long as the sun shows up every few days
and asks me to smile for her
I can breathe.
I have the stars already
and I have whats left of my family
in purple flower petals.

My friends are my soil
and they have been my solid ground
to replace the parts of mine that have crumbled
and recently fallen away.
They are as beautiful
as this breeze, and as important
to my heart beat.

My Dad is in pieces –
But I have them all here
In my Hand
I’ll keep him safe until
we can put ourselves back together again.
And I’ll keep my family
in the pocket of
today’s sun on the edges of my soul.

Am I alright???

No – not really

But I will be

Because there are 35 purple flowers across the street.

Press the little X

THIS is what me + disgusted + disrespected
+ taken for granted + very angry
combined with my computer close by --- all equals...
Read carefully if you care to:

SO was considering how to begin this thought
How to formulate what is going on in my head today.
And for the last week and some change I suppose...
And all I came up with was
that -- I already did -
it' s 3 posts down in bright GREEN letters.
do I seriously need to RE-POST
the entire rant about honesty?
I mean what the F?????

I'll ask out loud
(type out loud)
One more F*&#$@ time.

Please DO NOT
complain to me about people lying to you -
when you can't be honest with me.

seriously.

forget it.

And Please
DO NOT ask (or expect)
any thing from me
in any way, shape, or form what so ever
a smile, a favor, or any thing else ------
until you can
be truthful to me

Do NOT call me a "friend" when you're
only willing to be one yourself,
when it is convenient for you.

IF you know something
DO NOT lie to me about it
to make your life have more
"options" or what ever it may be...
(that includes serious ommition of
pretty damn key pieces of information
that you know you should tell me off hand).

For any one that cannot agree to these terms -

I have nothing left to offer you.

no,...I take that back --

nothing I WANT to offer you.


(if you don't think this applies to you... - it really probably doesn't).

***This is my place to vent
if you don't want to hear it
feel free to press the small x
at the top right hand side of this box
(and for mac users... you might as well just give up and get a PC)

*just kidding mac-ies... ;)

I'm not going making any disclaimers or excuses for this post

It is what it is.

falling away

I keep trying to write something about my Aunt.
I know it would help but every time I start,
I feel it’s like talking about the dead – that aren’t dead yet
I can’t write about her dying
– because I somehow feel it might speed it up
Like a child believeing,...
if they say they don't believe in Fairies
that they'll all fall away-
but she isn't a fairy, she's my aunt.
and I feel like I’ve lost her already.

My Dad called again
And I didn’t bring it up
Because I knew he would
I’m so thankful he can speak to me about this
to someone,... anyone,...
I'm 1/2 afraid the weight of this
will break him
into pieces I can't put back together.
He’s not exactly an open person
But he’s letting himself be - a little– with me
And so I let him bring it up
And tell me how she looks
Tell me about her laugh
and her tears
about the things she said today
And the pictures he found in a box
of the two of them on Brooklyn side walks
sometime in the 50's
He tells me how much he loves her
How she apologized to him
for not being able to grow old together
they way they had planned
she tells him she's sorry
they're not going to get to do the things they love to do.
He tells me this
as though it's an everyday conversation
but in his throat is his heart
I can hear it beating over the phone
I've never heard his voice do this
not like this.
I remind myself she’d be angry if I was too sad
If I let myself stop my life for a moment
for her.
But I feel like there is no ground
There is nothing worth standing on
When I picture her gone.
There is nothing left if people like her can disappear
into the blankets she is wrapped in
I’ve lost so many people
Friends – family this year.
People oldler, and younger...

But this
This is the worst thing
And I can't even write why
because I'm not strong enough
to keep my fingers typing once I start crying.
And I can’t make it go away.
I can’t fix it
I can’t protect my father from loosing her
My family is so small to start with
We have nothing left
To remove one more branch off the tree...
It feels we’ll all just suffocate and eventually fall away.

I’m writing,... I know
But it’s not really about her
There is so much
About her
That is everything right with the world
And now
Soon
Gone.
Is this worse than suddenly loosing someone?
I haven’t decided –
Both have happened so recently
But my heart has seized beating for this week
And the next
And maybe the next
We won't know.
It could be tomorrow.
I feel like screaming if I think of her in pain
But it’s not simply screaming
It’s a whole body-tear-the-world-apart-scream
That no matter how hard I try
Can’t fix this feeling inside
My God
I can’t do this
Someone please
Reverse this.
I don’t know how to watch my father this way
I don’t know how to loose her
Should I be strong?
Because I’m not
And that makes me feel so guilty
She is the strongest woman I’ve ever known
My God
Judy,
I’m so sorry I’m not better at this
For you
I love you so much
Where is my ground?

It’s falling away with you.

This isn't really about Texas

Texas was everything I never thought it wasn’t.
If you can sort that sentence out –
get back to me and tell me what I just said, because I lost myself there.
I’ve been taken to a place in my heart this last two months
that I’ve pretty much avoided for the last four years.
and I really think that changed my perspective on everything I saw this weekend.
I’ve become sort of worn down I suppose.
I still don’t write love poems.
For anyone.
I hate to fall
I don’t care how great the way down could be
When you hit the ground at the end it’s so easy to break
I’ve gone by so long with no one that has caught my breath
That I've got sort of use to not breathing at all.

Last year I had a moment
And instance I’d never had before
I met a person I felt I could not let slip away
I could not let them walk out of my life without telling them
That they were simply beautiful
I suppose that opened a door of sorts
I’d never done that before –
Stopped someone – pulled them aside and said
“look, I don’t know what this is, but I don’t want to say goodbye to you”
And not once has that thought changed in my mind.
Even now. I feel the same about them
But it slowly became
An accepted space between what is
And what can’t really be.

I would never regret that moment
And am even a little happy I had the nerve to do such a crazy thing
I learned a valuable lesson in risk taking.
If someone walks into your life
And leaves you running their existence over in your head
Like a really great song lyric
Then maybe
Just maybe
You should tell them so.

I didn’t find true love and eternal happiness from my honesty
Nothing so Disney movie as that
But I did still end up with a friend I value
granted... a friendship
with a strange attraction that hangs in the air
The way incense smoke does
It’s beautiful and visible, real and solid
But is nothing you can hold in your hand.
Nothing you can capture and count on for anything more
Than the pattern in makes in the air.

If it ever catches fire for real,
It would be amazing,
But it’s doubtful, and I’d rather not
Stare into the smoke of something
I can’t ever touch.

and so my heart let go of that instance
in a lot of ways after that
And I've just walked though time
The way you might walk though a tunnel
Surrounded by beauty on all sides.
walking though looking at the ground so that I wouldn’t
Accidentally slip and fall...
...For anyone.
Two months ago I let myself
Look up from my feet and
Realized I had fallen
Somewhere along that path
And again
I was honest as could be
once I knew how I felt.
but would never give up the friendship
I do not regret giving my honesty to this person
Because they are incredible in every way
I would not trade our friendship for really anything
And would never want to let that go

Finding out you care so much for a person
That all that makes you happy – is to see them happy
Whether that be even seeing them with someone else
Is a great – weird feeling.
Letting them go and being perfectly alright with that
is an even weirder one

I left for Texas feeling rather free I suppose
And the last thing I expected was to
Trip all over again
And in the strangest way.
It seems for 4 years straight I met no one
That I felt I connected to
Now in a matter of one week (not even, Wednesday – Sunday)
I’ve been around 3 people
that make me loose all ability
to speak in complete sentences when I think of them
And yet there is nothing I can do about any of it
For the two I’ve explained above
Things are simply as they are.

And that is where my weekend was
I was ½ in one world and ½ in another
I was busy trying to pretend my family
Isn’t loosing another limb
And that my aunt isn’t going to disappear in a mater of weeks
That my Grandmother is fine
That my mother is alright
And that we’re all – just fine
I had my game face on
Working hard not to feel too down
Or to pull my teams mood down.
All this I’m sure made my weekend what it was
I know I was more sensitive to everything
That my heart was already ripped apart and beating in my hands
Before we even landed in Austin.
I called my father maybe 30 times from Texas
Not for me-
For him.
And if you knew my family
That says enough to what it is we’re all going though.
All this
And the histories we all brought back with us
from the past 3 years of this event
... that was all there
Like incense smoke patterns dancing to poetry

I was so caught in another world
that I barely noticed when
they started to talk to me.
I don’t know them well enough to call it anything other
Than simple admiration
But they caught my breath
And people have to do a lot for me to change my breathing pattern.
I’m thankful to have the time I had
And I have a genuine desire to
Find this person again so that can tell them
That with their humor
They saved me from tears more times than they will ever know this weekend
That by simply smiling and talking about
Something as silly as my love of stars, camping and penguins
that they took me away from the swirl of stress
that was twisting in my heart for just a few moments
They reminded me that amazing people are everywhere
And that friendship is worth it all
why I wasn’t more open with them about it all
may have been the wrong decision...
This may have been one more time
I should have spilled my mind
And let them know how I felt.
But there are some instances
That can’t be had

But with luck
I will keep this person as a friend for as long as I can.
and hope I will one day speak to them again
and let the same smile
race across my lips
simply because - they are.

In words

Why is it so damn hard for people to be truthful with each other?
our words are weaker than our actions,
it’s written all over our quote books in the ink of our experience
“actions speak louder than words”
“actions speak louder than words”
“actions speak louder than words”
we’ve all seen it, and believe it enough to repeat it.
So logically that should prove how pointless it is to tell a verbal lie.

People tell their story in a thousand ways
Usually whether they want to or not.
it comes through in more than words
because we are creatures of expression
of physical contact,
love,
smiles,
and laughs
We are made of these moments
words are there to simply describe
the passage of these events.
They are there for support, to help explain
What we’ve already told the world.

Please don’t insult me by telling me
Anything less than what your truth already is.
I don’t want empty words.
I play with them all day long
And tire fast of things I know so well
I am a poet, they are my Lincoln Logs
My dangerous toys
that should come with safety warning labels

ATTENTION!!!: People with false tongues do not use with out moral supervision
WARNING: May cause choking of the heart is used improperly
CAUTION: Words may cause harm to unborn love
DO NOT disconnect words from actions, this could lead to serious shock, or burn
*if Words are swallowed without Action, call the Center for Trust Control

Words are toys with the sharpest edge,
And can be made from the cheapest plastic
I remember that my favorite childhood toy was
Also made from cheap plastic
But I loved it the way a child loves unconditionally anything that is truth.

I don’t think we have ever grown out of this
We thirst for what we want to hear
In words,
and cover our eyes to actions
Then speak the mantra
“actions speak louder than words....

....so please SHOUT your WORDS
drown out the vision of your actions for me".

I am sick of plastic toys
I want your words to echo what I see in your eyes.
What you have already told the world.
There right now is a link missing
Between the two
And that,…

That
Is what takes my breath from my chest
And makes you ask me
daily
if I'm ok
as you search for the smiles on my face
that have recently left.

I suppose give out my truth
sometimes
much to easily,
And perhaps I should learn to hold it back
because for me
my words this time
are my actions.
They are together
Connected
I offer you both in unison
All I ask in return is the same respect

To return truth to a friend
When they hand you theirs wrapped in the folds of their heart.

I fall into your words like they are black holes
Because you speak in universes.
Completely lost to why
I’m counting constellations of your actions
connecting them up with your words
and finding only mis-shape’n images
I just want to see
the picture as it really is
Just tell me
What it really is
So I can make the choice
to keep tracing your stars with the tip of my finger
Or to turn away
And find another place to fall.