Imagined bells peel. Stillness remarks,
While myriad voices jell together,
Cacophonously. Wet turbulence
Softens. Life remains.
I greet land afraid. Yelling,
Pummeling the shoal, I hope.
Denied.
Had I Wishes
Had I wishes, they’d not be spent on wings,
On super powers, other synthetic things.
Given millions, I’d save for infirm years,
Evading magic, avoiding social fears.
Yet, balloons collapse. Friendships, like ours, deflate.
Your provedores cease sending sweetheart telegrams,
Substitute with unripe ackee, likewise toxic elderberry,
Determine the need to mark how we think, speak, act.
Morally relaxed hearts then meter out gestures, roses,
Hankies, sugar, give bad reviews, unambiguous critiques.
Assume levels of love, longing, destiny, also obligation.
Spit at fairytales, give over unhappy narratives.
It seems, your mothers, all ebullient, lethal cassava,
Elected to your women, to hastily throw sprigs;
Samphire plus parsley. Their ballistics, honed to right
Angles, are meant to deter daughter-in-laws, also brides.
Swimming in Shemyim: Jacob Nissim Bensussen
Water runs downhill, toward unfathomable springs,
Where kedusha, emunah, origin mingle. Familial tears,
The ministrations of the chevra kadisha, the silences
Of tahara, and later of soda among sandwiches,
When respect poured out by callers fill memories,
Connections fashioned from immersed goodness.
No midbar here; Torah’s sweet fluids flowed
Through Yaacov to his son, daughter, wife, friends.
Life meant joy as oceans, mazel as rains. Washed
In teachers’ precepts, in Hashem’s righteousness, what
Exocrine glands confused, his neshemah gushed,
Overflowing quantities of the universe’s best lubricant.
His smiles soaked easily, his compassion saturated
Others’ soulful dryness, steeping away their pains of separation
From G-d, from klal, from self, in valuable streams. With ear,
With eye, with hand, he infused hope, b’tochen,
Union. Now slippery with those mitzvot,
Jacob Nissim Bensussen, zt’’l, swims, deeply in Shemyim.
Reduced Acuity
I brushed teeth twice,
Daily, before my wife
Died. Leaving three budgies
Plus an angry adolescent.
Sweet atrophy of mind or
Decreased function almost
Never gift me any more;
With five minutes of dysfunctional solace.
Depression, too,
Skips my address
Cancer or car accidents
Offer better venues.
So, my “troubles,” stay unpackaged
By glitzy news, by tidy breveries.
Such inner neap waves, roll, maybe
Ebb, without collected commotion.
Thereafter, no solecism, its sister
Faux pas, or other of the community’s tarts
Compensate my empty spaces. Just
Rough-hewn dissonance follows.
Acknowledgements:
Computer Cowboy, Missy Older, Older Dude, Missy Younger, Younger Dude, and the entire hibernaculum of my imaginary hedgehogs, can’t be thanked enough for tolerating my wonkiness and for making, most early mornings, those wonderful glasses of green tea. Words are nice, but family is essential.
Credits:
Three of these poems have been published elsewhere, as follows:
“Morally Tall Friends: Eucalyptus’ Lessons.” Jun. 2012. Spark!
https://www.getsparked.org/uncategorized/channie-greenberg-and-jane-hulstrunk.
“Reduced Acuity.” Bewildering Stories. Jan. 2011. https://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue413/reduced_acuity.html.
"Swimming in Shemyim: Jacob Nissim Bensussen." Remembering Yaakov. Mar. 2010. https://rememberingyaakov.com/hespedim.htm.
About the Author:
KJ Hannah Greenberg, who only pretends at being indomitable, tramps across literary genres and giggles in her sleep. She worries less, however, about linguistic beasts that roam at dusk than about bold fiends that smile and gulp up writers during broad daylight.
In the beginning there were Watercolors, 1979, a musical, and Conversations on Communication Ethics, 1991, essays. Following a tour of duty in academia and then decades dedicated to parenting, there are: Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting, French Creek Press, 2010, essays, A Bank Robber’s Bad Luck with His Ex-Girlfriend, Unbound CONTENT, 2011, poetry, and Don’t Pet the Sweaty Things, Bards & Sages Publishing, 2012, short fictions. In the future, there will be, b’eH: Supernal Factors, 2012, poetry, The Nexus of the Sun, Moon and Mother, 2013, essays, and Oh Your Goodness!, 2013, essays.
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