You Touched Me Everywhere

You touched me everywhere,
Until the clamouring hammers in my body lay still,
And the wolves that had snarled and ravened within
Were routed and scattered, like dry leaves in the wind.

For you rolled me around
As the gardener's lad,
With sun-hard hands
And mud on his boots,
Might challenge the earth,
If the gardener's lad
Had a string of degrees
And a lyrical tongue,
And the earth was in need of seeds.

Amazing how hard hands
Can coax the tender sprouts
From the unyielding ground,
And tickle the roses into bloom.

I have been peeled like a peach,
Soft inside touched.
I have been
Delicious.

The Stone Speaks

You swept me off my feet
With a wink and a whistle.
Askew my petticoats flew
As I fell.

And then with a laugh
You dropped me like a stone
Into the dark well
Of forgetfulness.

But I did not forget.
Down at the bottom of the deep well
I lived,
Breathing underwater.

And I learned:
A stone does not dissolve
Nor does it die.
It just gets wet.

I want visceral rewards

I want visceral rewards.
I am tired
Of doing good for its own sake.
I was raised to believe
That virtue is its own reward.
But over the long run
I have not found it so.
The habit of virtue hangs heavy.
Stiff as an overcoat,
But threadbare, comfortless
Against the lonely winter of my days.

I want touch
I want to be stroked.
I cannot, without input,
Keep generating energy.
A kettle cannot whistle
Without warmth;
No one expects it to.
Even a boiler needs tending.

And I am not,
I am not an appliance, a thing.
And my life is not without significance.
Nor do I, by and large, regret my ways.
But I cannot stop a billion starving cells
From howling in the caverns of my skin.

I've been many kinds of addict

I've been many kinds of addict:
thumb sucker
nail biter
sweet tooth
gut stuffer
weed smoker
hard talker
puzzle whiz
and organizer of closets.

Mechanically I cope
by means of little cut-off switches,
automatic flick
when my burdened circuits overload:

Murder mystery
word game
television
dildo,
murder mystery
word games
television
dildo,

But still the pressure rises,
builds and rises,
still the pressure rises,
swells and rises,
still the pressure--click:

Shut down
turn off
float
let go
sleep
(oh sleep),
refuel
charge up
and try again.

Elegy on a Cigarette

My mother's breast,
Untasted then,
Now sucked.

Love lost,
Unconsummated then;
Now slowly savored.

The old neighborhood,
Old friends recalled:
Belonging.

The rope of smoke
To all my past.
My consolation
For all that never was.

And now, my courage.
On to the hard task,
Into the fray,
Again and again and again.

But first,
A cigarette.

Amphibian

I drown in dreams.

Gentle at first,
The waves
Come reconnoitering,
Rock me
In the hollow
Of my pillow.
Then urgently,
The powerful tide
Pulls me out,
Forces my clinging fingers
From the rope of consciousness,
Carries me down,
Down and down,
Holds me under
Until I stop struggling
And drown.

Every night.

There is a city under the sea,
Of shadowy surfaces
And shifting grey shapes,
All the ghosts
Of childhood.
We never left you, they murmur.
Even in that other world
We are always with you,
Fluttering around you
With our soft, invisible wings.
At night,
Our bony fingers
Reach above the waves,
Loosening your grip on the rope,
Thick rope now,
But stiffening,
And frayed.
We pick at its strands.
One day, my dear,
The last thread will split,
And you will stay with us.

Struggling and gasping,
I thrash back.
My head
Breaks the surface.
I heave myself onto the shore,
And as the last wave recedes,
Reluctantly,
I reach for the rescuing rope.

Post Mortem

I am not a practicing Jew,
But letter perfect
By birth.

Hitler wanted me for a star,
A smouldering, six-pointed star,
One in a cast of millions,
The theatre blazed with stars
(Tormented Hamlets
And poor Ophelias)
When he staged his loud
And monstrous spectacle
Before an audience that was
Deaf, and heard no evil,
Blind, and saw no evil,
Mute, and did not speak.

When the curtain rose
On the night of broken stars,
The critics didn't even attend.
Nor for years did they review
The grand opera Genocide.
To the shrieks and wails
Their ears had walls.

And that, my dear children,
Is why
Every Jew should own a diamond:
To bring at once to the box office,
Should the murderous chorus sound again,
For the fastest ticket
Out of the theatre.