My Cousin Kenny Died (7/14/09)

Kenny:
1.used to peer with his big brown inquiring eyes into my big baby buggy and wake me up immediately.
2.used to scare me when he wore his brown horn-rimmed glasses because I thought he was a doctor.
3.used to come to our house in Sea Gate, open the refrigerator door, take nothing, close it and then leave (after dropping off his passenger).
4.used to point to his cheek if he wanted a kiss.
5.used to collect coins punctiliously in a long knitted sock/change purse.
6.had a laugh that started about 1w0 seconds before it actually started.
7.never said a bad word about anyone.
8.loved to listen to "Caprice Italiana" over and over again on his sparkling new spindle record player.
9.used to pick me up every winter and spring vacation, rescue me from 3723, warn me not to dare vomit in his perpetually new car, produce Dramamine just in case, and take me to the infinite delights of 120 Vermilyea Avenue.
10.used to share his bedroom with me during those vacations. He would come home from his late shift at the drug store very quietly; I would pretend to be asleep. One time he caught me peeking and started yelling that I was up too late. I got very scared at the time, but now I know it was just a pretend yell.
11.used to bring home unimaginables from his before-its-time-CVS-type drug store: PEZ machines, frog on a rubber string that squeaked when you squeezed the attached rubber ball, etc.
12.used to eat pretzel sticks while lying on his back on the floor (head on hassock) watching TV. I think they were Drake's.
12.found the love of his life, my "cousin" Helaine, whom he treated like a queen. (I remember how they both looked as they used to drive up Oceanic: beautiful Helaine with that red lipstick that could only look well on her; dashing Kenny, so much in love. (I believe that at one time he had a convertible.)

Rest in peace, dear Kenny. We miss you.

Poem by Anna Akhmatova, tr. Rivka Basya Blinova

I've learned to live simply and wisely,
Look at the sky and pray to G-d,
Before the evening walk and wander
To wear all worries from my heart.

When burdocks rustle in the ravine,
And rowanberry cluster dives,
I compose happy verses about
The futile, but beautiful life.

I'm returning back home. Fluffy cat,
Licking my palm is purring sweetly,
And bright fire's flaring ablaze
By the lake on the high saw-mill steeple.

Only occasionally silence is pierced
By the cry of a white stork in fear.
If you'll knock on my door, it now seems,
I might not even hear.


(Rivka Basya, where and how are you? Should you read this post, please email me at poelm34@gmail.com. Thanks, Ms. Moser. Same goes for anyone who knows anything about Rivka's whereabouts, activities, etc.)

Sweet Simples

The sweet simples of sanity:
My love,
when you went away, I doted on the dance
of dust in sunbeams; I lived by the placement
of spoons, the arrangement of rooms, the presence
of spools and needles and pins and thread that kept me
walking through days and space without you.

We were the simplest of simples:
blood reds, bone whites, mud browns.

Sweet solid simples! Grain of wood
on old tables, the tiny rims of thimbles,
melted-down candles,
jars of Indian head nickels.

O simple simple simples.

EM

Envy/Pity

Recently I found myself sitting with a friend at Weill - Cornell, the hospital that houses my oncologist and his staff. This time I was there not for myself but for my friend: She was about to be diagnosed with chronic leukemia.

G- d knows we saw a lot during the four hours we spent in the waiting room, but I am going to tell you about one person in particular. We will call this person merely - Person.

Person walked into the waiting area about halfway through our stay. Person wore dark glasses, so the eyes could not be seen, but the face was delicate, quite pretty and framed by simple silver hoop earrings. The clothing struck me as rather cavalier for someone whose fate it was to join the rest of us on the third floor of Weill-Cornell: jaunty black gauzy shirt with three unclosed buttons at the top; sleeves about three-fourths of the way down the arms; standard jeans and the daintiest ballet slippers I have ever seen.

How wonderful, I thought to myself, to be so in-control of one's self and one's surroundings and simultaneously to carry inside the knowledge of one' s cancer! My thoughts continued: If only I could be so liberated from psychological pain - so free of despair ! - instead of being the miserable kvetch that never forgets for one second that she is walking this earth only by the greatest mercy of the L-rd above.

I continued to watch Person waiting for blood tests: I saw no anxiety; no apprehension; only self-assured ease and the prettiest, perkiest face in the room.

Then something happened: Person's hands started moving a bit, and I noticed - and I noticed - they were a pair of MAN HANDS, straight from an old Seinfeld episode. But this story has a different twist: It now became clearer by the second that Person was on the third floor (oncology, urology, hematology) because a sex change operation had recently been performed. On her. On him. Qui sait?

I waited for the receptionist to tell Person it was time to see the doctor, but she merely called out the name "Cooper;" no Mr., Mrs., Ms. or anything.

And then suddenly my envy became pity.

What of this person's mother? father? wife, perhaps? Children?

What if my own cherished son had come to me only to declare that he could no longer live in a man's body? What would I have done then?

Soon the totally inappropriate questions came to mind: Does Person have cancer? Or does she visit Suite B/Urology because of new excretory organs? There seemed to be a substantial mound of bosom on Person's chest: cancer? new boobs? Who knows?

I could not wait to share my story. I told myself this was not really gossip; it was only a natural need to unburden disturbing thoughts. I soon learned that I am about the only one with these disturbing thoughts: the rest of the world (including Iowa, of all places) has gone soft on difficult sexual matters. (Or should I say that hardly anyone cares anymore? Except me.)

This happened some weeks ago. I am waiting for my feelings to morph into guilt, the emotion that eventually replaces every single feeling I have ever had.

This time, however, it would be appropriate and welcome....


Post Script (Next Day)
I have been reminded (again) very ardently, very vociferously (again) that Hitler killed "odd" people like gays, gypsies, the crippled and JEWS. (Members of some of these categories probably did not even merit torture - just death.) Of course G-d wants us all to remain as we have been made, but, as a transgender individual asked Oprah, "How would you feel if you had a penis?" The resulting look on her face said it all.

Fine Point, by John Updike

Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
undoubtedly existed, and Israel's defeats -
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely - magnificent, that "surely" -
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.

poem, for J:

To lose you, the fine-tuned boy
I used to know
would be like the French losing
the solid gold inch
that is kept for all time
as the standard measure,
the very basis of all
normalcy, regularity.

To lose you, my strong scion,
would be like losing
the stuff of me that
still remains: uterus,
right ovary, heart, breasts
all filled with mother's
love.

To lose you, proud elk,
straight and true as any
of G-d's trees,
would be like losing
a pulse, a steady
metronome
beating continually
the rhythms
of whatever life
is left.

To lose you - dear Lord - to lose him
would be to press Your fingers
upon my lids forever.

em

Ecce Cur Menum

Heart:

You would expect it to be mercurial:
when chopped into little pieces,
each bit should attract another
until the heart resumes
its proper size and shape.

It does not.

It breaks up into
salt and potassium
and who knows what else

uselessly elemental.

Perhaps even carbon:
I think I have found
my carbon footprint
stamped into my heart,
like clogs of puzzle waiting
to be reassembled.

I have not been good:
pieces of clumpy soil
deprived of its oxygen
have stopped up my heart:
grass uprooted,
flowers black with age.

How easy as a child
to break a thermometer
and let the mercury
swim together!

No more.
Only shards of glass-
and muddy ash.

em

Purification

G-d gives us this period of time before Yom Kippur to purify our selves in order to be worthy of standing in front of Him and asking forgiveness.This time should be used well; it is another one of His precious gifts.

I have been praying a lot for ridding myself of desire, that succulent snaky thing that crawls all over your innards and makes you stop short some times because your breath has simply been taken away. (I think I can begin to understand Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" a bit better now. "G-d, save us from this bomb falling over our home, and I will give up my desire forever.")

Giving up desire is not easy, especially when it comes at this late hour of life. The desire itself reminds me of being young and of having functional bodily parts that etiologically and correctly used to stir rather frequently for the purpose of reproduction. Now there is no purpose at all: just needless lust that creeps into the bedroom to mock me and hovers like the ghost that it is over my empty, lonely body.

Giving up desire is particularly difficult when the desire is for the wrong person: a gonnif, a thief, who has eaten away at me like the cancer that once destroyed some of my bodily parts. Giving up desire becomes especially hard precisely because it is so forbidden and reminiscent of the two year-old girl who had to choose between her seductive daddy and the stern truth of her mother's realities.

So I use this time to rid myself of desire, but the nighttime dreams still steal into my bedroom and the same old snake sneaks through the keyhole.

I pray for purification so that I might stand before the L-rd and pray for forgiveness.

But Will the Levees Hold? - 1 Sept.2008

Oh heart:

Let's you and I imagine inside me
ten trillion drops of blood trying to push through
barriers like those barely built in New Orleans,
the city of sin that belongs in
the Old Testament, awaiting flood
after flood, until nothing remains
but the little boy who says, "My mama's dead;
someone pushed her in the water."

Heart, we have been pushed into water, too.

What if this time the crude levees clearly break
and the droplets rush in to become Red Seas
of hate, anger, despair, and, worst of all, the chance
of no more love in this very small country
we call my soul? Oh, Lord, spare my son
the sight of seeing his mother drown
in the detritus of her own overgrown cells;

Heart, let us hold on to what we know
of life and its sustenance and of prayer.

e.m.

for Greg, Dallas, TX., 3/5/84

Missions outside this house acquaint us with death:
You return to your historic pines
that bend and cross
and tangle a web
of Reynoldsian green.
Along the dirt roads, among the cones,
small animals lie dead,
and snakes that shed skins from year to year
remind you that, in another life,
you are the one who came from there.

And I, one thousand miles north,
search the sands for memories.
Footprints beached over; mine that year -
his, hers, theirs - everywhere.
The rot that comes to shore
might be dead, half-dead or alive:
jellyfish that sting when you touch;
mussels inside shells; a drop of seawater
under the glass, swimming
with creaturely life.

The skulls of old women amaze us both.
The wrinkled forehead skin
shrunken so thin
as to allow faint bands of light
to penetrate the bone enclosed within.
We resist the basic urge to bend and kiss
in search of softer body flesh.

Instead, we carry our need back to this house
where the dying and dead
inhabit museums
inside our heads.

ellen moser