April 8-14, 2002: 4th Annual Yom Hashoah Issue

A cold November morning
sleeting rain hampering visibility They walked a barbed wire fence
along deserted property Lone figure dressed in prison black-white
standing motionless inside its divide Emaciated, motionless in sandals sunk
into mud Mounting consternation,
recognizing him, his respected math professor
at the University of Berlin Agitated,
father asked what this facility was Prison camp for political offenders I know this man, he is not an offender, why is he here?
It would behoove you to remember the reason
for the trip and not concern yourself with
what is none of your business Heated argument, cut short when told:
We can easily make arrangements
for you to join your friend, also for
your four children and wife, whose mother,
we happen to know, was American?

The beginning of the end for my father
who that day and that night
lost belief in his country, its leader and minions
as he realized what political insanity
was schemed and knew
that the war had to be lost
and would most certainly be lost Never again himself, he put on the blindfold
of work uninterrupted, care unfelt, and
from then on meted punishment with vengeance
at real or imagined infractions In silence we suffered and began to hate

Source: Abikhaled, Kaye Voigt (2001) CHILDHOOD IN THE THIRD REICH:
World War II and Its Aftermath,
pp 11-12 The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY.

death met them as they left the train
kept the count
as it strode along the platform
in its sharp creased uniform

it sat at tables
in a white coat
making a selection
it gathered in the clothes
it mounded up the glasses
extracted teeth
poured in the gas
pulled out the dead
burned up the corpses

death kept count
of the soon to be dead
till they became
more marks on a sheet

it filled up graves
with them
and with the dust of millions
as it tried to keep the count

afterwards death said
it had just been
obeying orders

You were an Esperantist
a booster of a language
based on hope
a language invented
by another hopeful Polish Jew
but you spoke more than Esperanto
when there was no hope
was there a prayer?

I can’t imagine your words in the dark
when you were hidden
by a Lithuanian scientist
until it got too dangerous
then you were out on your own

Whatever I imagine
can’t be more than a shadow
of some complicated and simple truth
somehow you survived as a shoemaker
I picture you with nails
between your lips

Amazing you weren’t nailed
by a customer

when the bite is going down farther
than the speed of light
rededication against ego life
words splattered comatose again and again
demonic in a tide eternal bile

a sea of faces, voices with unreason and come up
for breath is what we need is what we seek
this love she cares for me
in the recesses of time standing sentiment
white town houses, tin plate roofs, the porticoes
near Southern France we were newly Jewish together
to be wrong and young and beautiful and bound and I
loved
the secrecy
the madness of the needlework we prevailed until
the end when it all seemed insincere
the way your blonde tresses shrugged me off
like so much sticky renegade cum against
the turbulent rationale of a mindless situation

to a uniform looking better by disabandonment
your nazi vizer the way your perfect sultry compliment
strange vixen of the unrepentant
I caught you beneath the drunken mistletoe
passionate lung gasps into a silent night
in solo gorgeous, though bottomless volunteer
I contort the virtuous wavery of your legs
blonde and flowing like your short-cropped
gray uniform squeaks and the stern faÁade repeated

you’re impossible to feel you it all exactly all of
you tell you now
but I was crying inside every day I made love to you
and everyone knew they were all dead
you hypocrite commandancia of the ricochet

how spent is a young life in tragedies
European influence the decadence of machine guns
stucco left me reeling while the smuggled celluloid
impasto
tossed me soaring though torn away and shredded
in the end of life there is no reason and
we swore to treason by the peace ensignia
Hitler crushed it out of our guts
the contemplation of genocide, a murder
of friendly families out for cold
reason’s stoney face was railed abutment
to the injustice of the momentum

I guess she was right after all, my distant widow
through the eternal unknown will again
I kiss your smile lost on that white windowsill
with tears in your eyes how I’d wish
we’d never fought at all and you were still
wrapped in my arms living the luxury propaganda
would bring us through the freedom of speechlessness
superficially omnipresent past the barrier of
lifetimes
I can see the loaded railcannon of a gun rack railroad
station
and our final episodic victory that would send
me virtuously crackpot unallied into the heart of the
beast

with three heads he comes
with Seven crowns the Seven princes
the sins of all humanity upon his scarred and tawdry
soul
and the one thousand will rise up against him where were you then my friends?

did you die in the walls of mayhem fists clenched
and blood streaming over clay macaw
chirping perhaps mowed down by
pre-concussion winged knock-down
of artillery, mortars, machine-gun fire
exploding lights of your grounded universe
a monument of Zionistic triumph
overshadowing wing
in the spell of eruption
the stone edifice fell over
the spray crushing everything

did you lead the sheep?
against us now, but reconstituted in terror?
was the au revoir-de-chez victorious in
disenfranchising your salvation?
another victimized criminal of the war?
a flier, a shooter, a rebel, a looter?
will you gather against the stream, non-?

all of us blind can hear the blank cacophony of so
many lost amniotic souls
imploding

bombastic blast last heard
by plotters shadow-lit for weeks
explosion cast metal casings
interred, a life too close to concealment
behind crates with the ammo dump
final fire’s remnants
echoes empty

too bad the Yanks stormed in too late
last night the bombs were floral beauties
and the torrents of dead poppies are painless
loose blood seeping over fingertips.

Disclose no secrets oh! woeful burdens mine,
Because a mortal is only a vacant fantasy entwined,
The shams of each battle takes us on our singular way,
But it is the delights, not heartache that light our path,
Preordained by diamonds in Spirits mystical, multi-facet array

Behold; behind the heart lives a soul that sleeps in the dark,
And will kindle its light of grace when we become aware,
of magnificent illuminations in the spark
Life is authentic but the ego is a masquerade,
Life is a pledge but the intellect can breach the promise,

Somber is not our meaning and our fate is but a dream,
From ashes back to ashes, our facade our gloss from dust to dust,
Nevertheless the psalms of the soul is eternally contained,
In Gods legitimate trust.

Homebrew
ancient chinese
handpick one herb
sift seed
dig root
ground-up spice
gather the holes
to magic elixer
mix with (10) parts
steam the water
pour luck cups
inhale, inhale, inhale
vapors to soothe
clean the skin
of all trouble
unwrapped silk cocoon
born from womb

great grandma ghost
ate her charcoal cake
with all the cousins

gas sponge swept bones
in bonfire bags
her killing tea

slip tooth
behind sacred walls
now silence

great grandma ghost
tomb tatoo sleeve
crack her knuckles

sing song campfires
virtual bombs
in our cookie jar

skip screams
the ways of a scream
in your reach

great grandma ghost
sipped deep,  so slow
the killing tea

wind-up the vats
sit down and gaze
at skinny sheep

the seeds they string
plastic beads to glue
hung our bones

great grandma ghost
ate her charcoal cake
with all MY cousins

sipped deep,  so slow
our killing tea
face caved history

handpick a soul
sift
dig
ground-up
gather
elix
mix
steam
pour
inhale, inhale, inhale

vapors to soothe
clean/cleanse the skin
of all trouble

womb to tomb
womb to tomb
womb to tomb
and marigold rising.

Ana: The Peaceable Kingdom

It was said that an angel flew over Chelm
with a bag full of the souls of wise men
The bag tore and all the wise souls fell out And so (with Yiddish irony) it came to pass,
that from such prodigality of sagacity
the inhabitants of Chelm are famously foolish
Ana was born in Chelm Her name was Chana then The people
didn’t know, nor were they, really different from
any other people, neither more foolish, nor wiser She was happy in the house on Lubelska
But then, drifting across Europe, the slow tide
washed over Chelm: the Depression, Polonization Her father lost his horse, the wagon Unable to endure the shame of coming home
the dread of facing the faces of his wife, six children
without a coin to buy a crust of bread, one day he did not return
Chana learned hunger
the humiliation of poverty,
Mankind’s astounding bestiality
She says, I want to leave something behind,
My story For my children, my grandchildren
Generations to come L’dor, v’dor
We work on the book in her sunlit kitchen She bakes strudel Eat, eat, she urges Wide windows look down on the yard Animals and birds
engorge themselves at feeders– a groundhog, squirrels,
the ubiquitous big crows of Maryland I expect a lion to wander in from the woods
lie down with a lamb

In the yard a small orchard– apple, cherry, and pear trees Birds eat the cherries She puts out a salt block for the deer,
fills the gazebo with carrots for the winter I say, Your neighbors must hate the deer They eat the flowers and shrubs Don’t you mind?

It’s all right, she says.

when the night came endless for the chosen,
when all the stars were ripped from the carpet
and your tea spilled You kept trying to blot it with a white handkerchief
while the stain turned red, became a stream
curling around the rocker and under the door
The people in the next town walked with horse blinders
and whispered behind their hands All the while the little stain trickled to the street,
and the clinking of falling glasses,
the thudding of shoes–
cast like something children grow out of,
was thunder in the deaf woman’s ear
Now I can’t forget

when the dust lays her blanket down
and we pick through piles of the estate sale
gone terribly bad, gone crackers,
and who’s to sell the gleaning?
How many bones do you need?
Glasses?
Gold?
A watch perhaps?
Careful when you touch them, you’ll hear them scream I breathe with my mouth open
afraid their spirits will enter me,
that I will smell the mother pulled from her baby,
taste the river on her face–
her heart coming apart,
holding the broken tea cup,

and the tea
sinking into the rug
trickling to the street
and staining my hands
while I try to sop it up with my white handkerchief