cutting great neck

this isn’t the picture you found mounted on the wall
with its black border as thick as a finger
so firm against the white, like gloss.

when the slabs of metal rose behind the glass
in bulging black blooms, windows that fleshed out light
as if it were blood to congeal,
did you really hope with all your heart to live?

when even the sounds of skin tearing
filled your stomach to the brim with thoughts
that sat like folded paper balls slowly falling apart,
did you really think you could break through?

when even the shadow of your straightened body
poured across the painting like a ghost of a structure
and levitated in it so corpse-like—when even
the night said it would be dark—when even the moon
desiccated into a strip of sour milk—
when even the earth early in the morning stretched
like the ocean and you couldn’t see anything
but the glint of eyes in the distance—
did you really think that the sun could never blind you?

this isn’t the picture you found mounted on the wall,
this isn’t the nail that bent into the plaster,
this isn’t the palm-center that ripped,
or the eyes that burnt on the thirteenth floor
of your innermost dying dreams;
this isn’t it at all. when even deferred dreams
crush, did you really think
crushed dreams could ever be deferred?

label me: poem

she sat me down
in the living room
outside the light was blue
and it came
in small strokes, like wind
blowing over meadows.

the room fell in a cool hush,
after she told me
what she had called me in for:
then, i slumped in my seat
as if somebody died
(and inside, somebody did die)
and i nursed myself into an internal
tantrum, and i thought
no no no no no no no no
(please no)

and like a pistol’s trigger pulled
tears sprang and levitated there
in the clouds of my skull,
and the rhythm of my thoughts
fell away into a thumping
as incessant
as silence.

...tell me it
is not true.
please, tell me,
it cannot be true!

but like a nightmare
that you feel should not have been a nightmare,
one that only you
could so utterly fear,
her words compressed in my mind
and created a brain of its own.

thump, thump,
it said,
thump.
a voice that
apologized for its words,
but in vain

i gazed away,
towards
the street
(that street, home, it seems
as if you still belong to me,
as it always feels when we leave you)
so she would not see me cry.

walls i hoped i’d leave willingly one day
closed into us,
each white streak of paint
inching towards the pulling gravity
that spilled into the space between her words
and my unseen, unheard cries.

(thump, thump, thump,
each word filling itself full like
a decomposing garbage dump),
the trees
wavered in the winter waft,
their branches clambering and
quivering like a heart
that stopped living, but had not yet
passed on.

when i ran up the stairs
i wrote an essay
and a rant,
and a cry and a cry
and i wrote myself a cry,
a sob i had to compose
like a mind thinking itself dry, i did not stop
for anyone or anything
but only for my own mind
to fleetingly die

my window
turned up bare brown branches,
each twig finger kissing the glass pane
as if to comfort, or
to say goodbye.

label me: poem

you thought
there'd always be snow.

you'd always be
lonely,
and thinking.

you'd always
stay awake at night
listening
to the cicada scream.

you'd always write
when the house
was silent,
when the world still
filled with black smog,
silent.


you'd always be writing.
in that house, that
wooden house. "colonial"
they call it.
as if
we all need to remember
that they used to live in houses,
just like us.



there'd always be a coldness
when you "tiptoed" down the
stairs. in the cavity
of the living room

you felt the fireplace
blink. it permeated the air
and made you shiver. the floor
whispered cool prayers to your feet.

your music skirred
from your room,
a susurration of
night, of tonight,
of the long, yellow-highlighter
moon of memory.

outside the snow
shone against the bricks
like skin in a dark room.

and still you thought
it would never melt.

label me: moving, poem

write something that no one will read,
that no one will think was written. upset
that she’s leaving
and that we’re left to fend for ourselves,
claustrophobic
without patience
godless, yet fearful

these are the moments
that try souls, like a battered
body after a long hike,

with only oneself,
nobody you want around
and knowing that this
is what you’re gonna have to live with
for the rest of your life,
for the rest of these months
and weeks
and days and hours and minutes,

sometimes
overcome with emotion,
sometimes overcome
with loss, with the loss
of something physical, tangible
like the folds in a forgotten sofa,
the wrinkles of hands;
and something
mental,



because someone hates you, and they think
you don’t know.
overcome
i write something
so angsty i’d throw up reading it
only for the sake that perhaps
i’d gain some ill-gained sympathy
and that could help me
move on.

i’d never want someone
to ask me what happened

because sometimes
everything happened.

sometimes even the merest loud laugh
rattling from the kitchen
could set your soul off trying.

label me: loneliness, loss, moving, poem, sad

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.

label me: manhattan, miss, ny, poem

blue reeds drifting in the quivering black night
like long wisps of darkness. your bowl of water
has too long washed the blood from your face,
the blood that you were born with
and the blood which tears could never part.
their skin blackens the night,
primates screeching into the oblivion
that cakes the harsh, furrowed cheeks of night.
white boots clasp into the narrow bone of your face,
cold Wyoming winds howl from deep mouth valleys
packing into the empty space where your brain
decomposed. they crucified you
on a wooden fence
with firm brown strings of blood. your father
spoke at the trial,
his voice as cold as theirs
when their tongues lodged into the toilets
in their prison cells. they are reminded
of you
every goddamned daybreak
as the sunlight crunches into their faces
like a metal boot.

label me: poem

BULLET CASINGS LEFT IN FLESH:

night has slowly cascaded down her neck
like blood spurting from a freshly-bulleted
wound, as filled and heavy as a black hole.
perplexed flies drawn in by the red syrupiness
are swallowed; the skin and the flesh wane
like a rose’s petals in her arm, and darkness
settles into the scarlet sap of her tissue, burnt.

finally. i'm done. completely, eternally finished with my sophomore year.

hallelujah. no more tests, no more homework. it's summerimte and the sun will be out soon and the world will smile down on me. i'm ready to enjoy life.

i just watched full metal jacket. i nearly wept. anti-war thriller, so exhilirating, so... so sad.

---


on friday, grandma nety and cousin matan are coming. thrilled.

i got a 99 on my global regents, 95 on my chem regents. what about the rest? i don't know. i want to know.




this is it! tomorrow i will rise at 11, fall asleep at 1 in the morning, read books and watch movies, eat at restaurants and play with friends. my actual life has started. first real summer in lush, moist great neck, new york.


the trees have greened and leafed. layers upon layers of thin, green sheets gush from the tops of trees to the ground like long curtains. the sun pulses through each one. branches scatter across the sky.

can't wait to smell the linden trees. will visit manhattan sat/sunday. with grandma, with cousin.




goodbye, tests.

goodbye, griffin.

goodbye, papers falling out of backpack because of rotting apples.

goodbye, trips to bagel hut once a day.

goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

label me: family, great neck, high school, home, poem, summer, sun

i have collected
scraps of nothing,
the dead leaves
pouring from my
bedroom window
and into the world—
hundreds of them,
useless and tittering
across the parquet
with shallow faces
from yellowing plants.
the heat extracts
the strongest scents
from the greenest
trees: the evergreens,
the oaks, the sallow,
nocturnal willows
stand in rows, emit
a sacrosanct song
that trembles in the air
like empty voices,
unanswered gods.
“who do you think
you are?” the nothing
titters, and dust rises
from beneath bare feet.
maybe i’m nothing, too?



not posting too much; end-of-year tests, etc. sorry! will post more soon!

label me: poem, spring

this is such a horrid month. a stressful, long, agonizing month.


may.



ap, regents prep, homework up, fun down, i die.

i want feedback. is this being read, or is this just for my personal gain?


ap world in a week (may 20).
i'm (almost!) excited.

To my yellow dog:

Your lids close like lips
that summon sluggish words
with their last breath,
a night closing in on itself
like lips on a ball
of unraveling yarn.
Night has been your shelter,
my slumber—your guardian;
the wicked witch
has whipped you away,
you dying, yellow dog
with a head attached by
two thin yellow strings.
Diamond eyes and golden crust
that cooled against my cheek
evenings and summer afternoons,
under thick blankets, false hopes
that disappeared with daunting
dreams and jaunting ambitions—
night prowling in black,
plastic eyes, wind flapping
in long, detached ears. My yellow dog: Ten years,
you have brought me night;
Ten years, you have brought
me sleep. You aged Thai yellow
doll—your last barks ring
around my head in dreams.

edit:and sarah, this is not about ginger.

label me: high school, poem, sleep, test

you know how much
i try to love you,
and yet,
like an old twig splitting,
i stumble.

stumbling words,
swallowing each other
in a sentence, one by one
with unwrapped, blank lips:
another naked you
with a pair of typographic legs.

you know
how much i try
to know you,
and to love you;
(you know
my fears;
fears of words like
‘know’ ‘try’ ‘love’.)

stumble with me
through red forests,
with broken boughs
that we will shun.
and if we fall, then
our knees bruise,
our palms bleed,
and i
will rise
with your blood in my eyes.

blind me; until i am
as blind, and sick as
you.
then i will love you.

and i will try. believe
me, i will try—and i
fall,
and my knees bruise
and my palms bleed,
and then
i rise
with no blood
in my eyes.

label me: poem

manhattan on saturday february 28



sometimes i feel like life is... is like a long, roatating journey packed with ennui and fatigue, at times spotted with good points that sooner or later become strenuous bores, unneeded chores--a life filled with things from a life that has been lived before, a life... i don't know.



manhattan on saturday,
manhattan on sunday,
manhattan on saturday,
great neck the rest of the week,
cold air,
same people, same activities.

sometimes i feel like there's only history to look forward to; the past, the intriguing, beautiful past, jam-packed with death, violence, peace, love, hope, fury.



we went with the shapiras to south side seaport, that tourist hole near wall street, and then we went up towards chinatown but never made it, so then we just returned and dined at the same turkish place we ate at in june.

hmm.

we have guests now and i want to tell ya'll how nice life is and how normal and how ordinary and how strange my life is still and how dark night is outside, how dangerous, how enchanting like a movie.

ohh and yes, i did see two grand movies this weekend: "all about eve" (such a screenplay, such actors) and "la strada" (a bizarre connection to the glorious "nights of cabiria.")



i want to live in europe when i grow older; not new york, not san diego, not san francisco, not israel. europe: france, england, ireland, spain, greece, italy, germany romania russia. i want to live in a place where not everything revolves around you, when society has a social aspect and does not only consist of statistics.




i've been listening to a bunch of israeli songs lately

and i want to be in israel again

just to be there, alone, independent, in a small mediterranean apartment

with some girl, just locked up

and go to clubs, and listen to music and eat watermelons in the summer:

is it all that bad?

there is something like you
in me; something capricious
and sickly, a long shadow
inside my eye that expands
and contracts with the wind,
black and vile. i see you, the
vicarious creature, the untenable
wolf; vexing and peeling away
scars that have dried long ago,
drawing blood that has poured
long ago. you extend a drooling
arm, like a curtain, waving in
the wind and rain. the and needs
to be smaller, because we all
know that wind and rain
always go together, don’t we?
like harold and maude? and
porgy and bess? and sometimes,
i think, you and me—but not in
the small and sort of way, more like
in two voices that fall into place,
red and rose, chanting hymns together
like twirling snakes. sometimes,
i think, you and me need
smaller ands, like wind & rain,
wood & fire, dark & light.
you & the and is as little as
the light at the end of the tunnel.

<3 KIF KEF

<3 MEKUPELET


ANI CHOZER LETEL AVIV

I'M RETURNING TO TEL AVIV!!!

label me: boredom, europe, food, future, history, israel, life, manhattan, miss, movie, music, night, philosophy, poem

27/01/09

so let me start off from sunday.



sunday, we went to the lower east side with avi, judy, yahli; tenement museum, jewish market, delancey street. the tenement museum was so inspiring, so miserable too--giving us a glimpse of 7000+ people's lives, many of them immigrants, like moi. we couldn't talk pictures. oh well.

then we crossed delancey street



sped through the lower east side



and went straight into katz's delicatessen--i've been waiting since november 2007 to go there, when my parents promised me that we'll go the next time we visit nyc [little did we know that we would be living next to nyc by the next year. grr.]



had a delicious pastrami sandwich.



so yesterday i went to school--short periods. and then i asked jessica fogel about cat power cause she said she might go to the concert with me and so she rolled her eyes and said, "gadi, leave me alone? we have a midterm today!"

blink.

blink.

oh shit.

anyway, studied all day yesterday only to discover at 12:30 one of the easiest chem tests i have ever taken in my life.

yay!

and today i woke up at 9:26 after having the weirdest dreams ever. i dreamed that i was with a lot of friends on a big hill overlooking a quaint european/latin american/asian village which looked more like uniformly colorful legos than an actual metropolis. anyhow, i woke up when a big angry golden retriever cornered me to a wall with its big teeth.

and in an hour i'll be in school preparing for a history test.

it's 11:16 am over here and i'm getting tired.

ahhh.


poem for english class:

My Black Muse
another night peels from my eyes
like piano keys sliding off against
each other. a match burns from two
different sides; an old, dying wolf
wrings his tongue from the roof of
his jaw, and howls; a poetry book,
frayed, splintered, slides off a pile
of white papers. my table, fixed to
the wall, creaks. it’s ten p.m. before
my math midterm and i’m outside taking
pictures of the snow. black, señor night
winnows out the white lights in rows, slips on
his navy-striped cloak; i return home, my
fingers burning from the cold, burning
from the sudden heat of habitat, from
pressing the push button for too long.

label me: broders, dream, food, friends, high school, manhattan, poem, test

25/01/09

Another Snowfall

The world burrows its arms in my flesh
and another snowfall makes its home—
in the deepest whites of my eyes they mesh,
the ice and the glass, the dead earth combed.

Stems, twigs, white wooden men stand
and another root, stiff, ruptures in frost—
a red moon lifts in purple skies, as planned,
but the old sun perishes, thus far: dusk.

The eye sheds its white, piercing skin
and another finger atrophied and potted—
in jars, in vinegar, my eyes shut from within.
I sleep alone—waiting for the world to rot.

we went to manhattan yesterday and met judy and avi and yahli. time square; carmine's. amazing food. enormous dishes. we took the unfinished business home.

in toys-r-us




we saw a bunch of blood in bryant park, near the ice skating rink. some guy fell off a construction thing. another guy was hurt on top of it. who knows. lots of police. lots of firemen. we were not allowed to take picture, but, you know, the rascal that i am... i just couldn't resist.


the snow is melting. i hope it will snow soon.



i have midterms this week. i am so frightened.

obama. i love you.

and nothing really changed. nothing really new.



i downloaded a bunch of beach boys songs last night. it makes me miss california so much.



i miss california--the beach, the sun, the heat. the feeling. i miss it, not in a "i want to live there again" kind of way, but in a "i liked it and i want to visit it". maybe i do want to live there, one day.

on the east coast, i feel, people see the west coast as an exotic, wild place. that's what i felt in november, in sd. the palm trees, the smoggy nights, the hills, the beach, the sun. it's all different.

label me: broders, california, food, i love san diego, manhattan, melancholy, miss, poem

21/01/09

i don't know. i just don't know.

everybody knows my name in school. they all recognized my face. they speak to me. someone walks past me, asks me, 'are you gadi cohen?'. i tell them, 'no, i'm george.'

'i'm george.'

i'm starting to think i'm george.

i just... don't know.

don't know how--how i live like this. how nobody knows anything about me, how i don't know anything about me. i'm like sylvia plath--all alone, enclosed in my own bell jar, me and my music, me and my poems, my and my life. i work towards a goal--for what? what cause? to make my parents happy? to make myself happy? these are the best moments of my life, and i'm wasting them because nobody loves me. and it's true.

nobody loves me.

because this is america. this is israel. this is world. and nobody cares about anyone.

sometimes i feel like i'm the only person here who is utterly alone. not physically alone--i have friends. but mentally. all on my own. in a territory that no one has marked before.

two senior girls kidnapped me yesterday. into their house. i entertained them. brooke, tiffany. red-hair, persian. short, tall. they think i'm their friend. they drove me home. they're fun.

they don't know who i am.

i don't know who i am.



but frank sinatra is helping me.

does everyone else feel like that?



-------------------------

i explored the world today.



a day of exploration.

i went into the little closet--storage space, whatever you want to call it--and looked through the crap of Jane.

Jane, oh Jane! I am reliving you,
your childhood,
like you always wanted to do
yourself.

And although I don't know you,
I understand you.

I understand you.

an old stone wolf's head;



a naked marble woman lying on a 70's-style metal cabinet;

lamp skeletons collecting dust.



the cold frightened me.

i love, hate life.

label me: friends, melancholy, moving, music, poem, social life