cutting great neck

i am an accumulation of missing.

i can miss by request. ask me to miss the apartment on maklis in kfar ganim, where i took my first steps and looked out the windows and saw a city (a view i don't, can't remember), i will; ask me to miss my first house in america, the dinosaur chicken nuggets, the bar stools, the wallpapers that glossed like wet skin from the wall, i will; ask me to miss new york, san diego, palo alto, san jose, neve oz, and i will.

missing places is my forte. madrid, athens, yerushalaim: i miss you all with the fervency of an abandoned ghost, yearning to reach back to its home but trapped haunting its own haunted house.

i am really supposed to sleep at this moment

but i know that sleep will not come, for a long time

out of fear, of excitement, of nervousness

of this yearning to remember what i once wished i forgot

and thinking about knowing about thinking

makes me think about death

and i think about it

and sometimes it feels like a mini-quake in my rib cage

this thought that one day i will never be.

i feel like that now.

not dead. not not alive.

but not there. not being. not seeing, and feeling.

i remember the summer of moving.

i miss it.

turning 15; being 15; being new to a beautiful world.

i wanted to save this title for when i will be visiting you.


i couldn't resist.

oh, how i miss you: new york!

those black buildings. the rain's vicious pounding like blood as it surges up to the ears, each angry drop like another long string of muscle in a clenched, bitter fist waiting to pounce. night in the city. being alone in the city. living in the city--

but that's from so long ago.

i've downloaded so many new york city songs today.

so many songs about you, new york. and yet you've let the bay dig me a hole--a three-week-wide hole, a yawning gape deep enough to make me choke on lifetimes of air--so black and so permanent that i will never be able to wash the ennui from my skin.

now at least i'll have both hands on the wheels, like teeth punching through the ear of a corn.




at times when the at&t net coverage falters and i have nothing to do, i find myself reading old word documents. and i found a poem i wrote that i forgot about.

how i miss being able to write poems.

catchtwentytwo
1
i’ve been wondering
how to start this poem
for a while now.

i knew a capital i would be too vague. or may
be too specific.

my limbs are tired. worn-out.
i feel like a bag of arms, and legs,
and fingers and toes,
and tired old eyes. i never thought
the word catch-22 could be applied
to life—
especially to my
life.

but now I know.

2
it’s funny.
truth is cliché. “be careful of what you wish for”

i went to manhattan.

my mistake: dark, quixotic night, skies
that fall on tall, metal buildings like rain,
human beings like puzzle pieces, fit together, and
the sweet salt smell of coal-hot nuts in
aluminum, yellow cabs and rainy streets:

yes. november—i fell in love.

3
don’t look up, and don’t look down,
is how the song goes. mother came to me
and asked me: up or down?

sometimes, i told her, it’s better to keep straight.
i have a world waiting for me here: friends,
word documents. but she has worked. worked hard.

up or down? east or west?
and, you know. i was in love.

4
today the skies were gloomy blue.
the sun was muck yellow.
the sunset was curly, muddy,
like my footprint in the sand.

this is why it’s a catch 22, a cruel
circle: it’s either past, present, future.
and i am stuck deciding.

5
you can say that a catch 22 is a triangle
but i have to disagree.

you can say:
one vertex is where i am right now
and the two others are interchangeable,
one decapitation, another cyanide, and i
only have to choose.

but i think that a catch 22 comes in six round numbers:
which ones, i don’t know.
i am only on number 4.

6
the light in my room is yellow.
jazz music.

i feel stupid. but i know
that this is as profound as it will, can go;
that there is misery, and implausible skepticism here
(about my poem, about my life)

and that the light at the end
is only another tunnel

but at the end of the day the world is just a matter
of atoms—of metal, of plastic, of skin,
and one home or another doesn’t count.
one me or another doesn’t count.
one poem. one ending or another.

it has been a beautiful two-year experience.



i guess moving has become more of a ritual for me now. i am not in disbelief; i am not a child ripped out of its mother’s womb. more like a child whose head has been pulled gradually over a seven-month period out of the opening in his mother’s body at an increasing rate, until he knows the world and the world knows him, until he’s ripped out, however gently.

this almost feels natural, moving: this room is home, or at least a home, already.



i miss nothing, almost. i miss you, my friends; i miss the city. i have thoughts of missing my house, but only surface thoughts, superficial. i don’t miss middle neck road, and i don’t miss the LIE or the LIRR. i don’t miss walking down the street wrapped up in utter blackness all alone towards home; i don’t miss the best teachers i’ve ever had; i don’t miss the library (okay, i might, because the dvd section here stinks); i don’t miss memorial field, grace avenue or allenwood; i don’t miss fireflies, mosquitoes, cicada; i don’t miss being able to see the empire state building’s jutting rib of an antenna poking out from behind a field of houses from baker; i don’t miss walking ginger up and down the same corner so many times, each one so different than the others (the time i stole a newsday to pick up ginger’s shit; the time she hid in the bushes and i searched for five minutes all panicked); i don’t miss bagel hut, amal, sushi palace, starbucks; i don’t miss the trips to new jersey; i don’t miss the snow; i don’t miss missing; i don’t miss the u.s. open, watching the sun set from behind the profile of epic structures; i don’t miss studying on the swing; i don’t miss the wooden den; i don’t miss the stars, the tall trees, kings point, biking to the point, cheese bagels, extra-large ice coffee after fours hours of sleep, rotten apples in my backpack, writing on the drama room whiteboard, screwing nails, eating caviar from 108th street, dripping rainstorm rain, tanned skins after winter break, the way a wall of heat packs into you as you step into those doors and blows you backwards and the day just seems to open up like a (very warm) flower, pajamas to school, free movie tuesdays, metacognition, ap world history exam, deli on the green, cuttinggreatneck.blogspot.com, dreaming about israel and wanting to move there, listening to the last summer, philly washington d.c. or boston, guide post, yctiwy mattress crucible, coming home and puking all over the office floor because you’re so sick and tired of working, coming home and puking all over the living room floor because of a virus, swine flu, morning swim, brittle rain, holocaust books, listening to indie music at night, athens 2008, pretending to care about the 2008 elections just so people would know me, looking out and look it’s snowing, snow days, cousins coming to visit, tuesday evening journalism, ordering a whole pizza pie and feeding journalism, going with the stream, masterswarm, thinking at first that i missed san diego.




i miss the idea of them. i wish i could relive them quickly so i would know what i did and where, just like everything and everywhere in life. remembering unremembered memories. i wish i would’ve known two years ago where i am today so that i could have understood it more. who i am today.

funny, how we miss missing. how we yearn for those moments when we felt so miserably in need of something, how we yearn for yearning beyond yearning. how we miss being alone in the darkness. we miss reminiscing, remembering old, patched-up visions of an alternate future and a better past.