two fun-sized poems found in a journal.

1.
young man in a funeral suit
barcode on the bank door
empty tram lacks character of
sweaty school uniform or foreign language practicalities.
instead the peeling paint and beer on the floor asks
if this is the future, now what?

2.
dali's clocks are a picture of a girl
in vaudeville cottons;
escaping the
still heat of hot winds
through cities clean
of interference.

balaclava II

art deco on the roof
whilst wind blows through the beard
of homeless harry.

one german backpacker smokes sloppily
whilst his coffee cools.
i called it Red Terror
(you called it ironic)

the clutched bags and closed minds
eyes darting gossip of
out and insiders
fails to keep us warm at night.

we toss and turn over
3000 years of maltreatment. what Figes
said was right;
we are all, social, historians, now.

regardless, the bolsheviks were unable to
transform themselves from the underground
to the legitimate

so we too hide in doorways and under beds.

the trust that They profess - the unharmed and the young and the outsides looking in - doesn't soothe us.
these habits are hard to give up.

on balaclava

hot espresso dribbles down throats
while old jewish women compare
grandchildren and superstitions.
a remnant from gypsy days
plays his piano accordian too loudly.
kosher meats hang in windows
whilst hairless women in
heavy hung skirts act as pilgrims;
children follow blind
to the next festival,
celebrating the pasts they have not lives
(but have to live with)
our yom kippur is palestine
and our jerusalem
is no longer a safe place.
(but that's not what the bakeries or the zionist camps tell us. that's not what exists in the minds of thick pouches of skin beneath heavy eyes of our grandparents.)