The Idols of Our Fathers

Jacob said to me, "Rid yourselves of the alien gods,"
and we cried and we wept for them.

you picked up

where he left off
in so many ways a double.

Hamor

Genesis 34.1-31

What violence to you, Shechem, in your own bed,
slaughtered and tricked, the blood still running
fresh between your legs.
A bride price indeed, worth a nation of men,
was she not, the dark eyed Dinah,
who you fell upon in the fields beside a well.
Corpses lay across one another entwined,
contorted and screaming, the blood still running
fresh between their legs, still running
even after death in
growing pools that the rain beat back to
the dust.
My shame, to my shame a genocide
for a woman raped, a woman seized by
harpy fingers, jewels thick on the knuckles
that bit into her skin and welted red as she
wept home in ripped dress, blood running down her
leg, scratched by brambles, by thorns,
dirtied and stinking from violation.
Though Jacob shook, heads bowed,
the old yield to the young, as this is no country
for old men. Jacob slept and dreamed
of his new cattle, his new people
and the land shared between them.
While he slept, swords in hand,
Jacob's sons took your life as a bride price,
and took your sheep, took your wives,
took your children.
Dinah wrapped in bridal gold, led from
the bridal chamber
stepped on the violets that grew.

Bible Poetry Project -- Jacob and Rachel

Genesis 29.9-20

"And when Jacob saw Rachel, daughter of his uncle Laban, and the flock of his uncle Laban, Jacob went up and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of his uncle Laban. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and broke into tears... So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her."

Tending sheep is not such hard work,
lead them to graze and keep watch
against wolves and birds of prey,
birth them, and shear them.
The only troubles are neighbors.
Sometimes they steel your sheep,
sometimes you theirs.
That is the way of things in the land of Haran.
Day in day out, arguing over sheep,
voices rising over tinkling bells and
the songs of birds
that bathe in the dust beside the well.
Singing songs of my family,
cresting the hills with the flocks,
with a dog.
So my days go.
Rachel, she comes to me with
cheese and bread.
Rachel, she comes to me,
we lie in the fields and look up
into the heavens,
and seven years are seven days,
seven days are seven minutes,
seven minutes are seven seconds.
There is no time where there is Rachel.

Favorite Places in montreal # 1 Overpass St. Henri

Favorite Places in Montreal #1
Castro VC is incessant in this city
receding into the brick from the shouts of schoolyard children,
surfacing on the cement of an overpass, only to porpoise beneath
a poster for Jean Le Loup’s two night stand at Club Soda.
The tags of the city are Sirens
I walk past them huddled in doorways,
seizing the long strands of my hair,
ivying their arrows around my ankles.
He took me to the secret place beneath the highway,
mattresses pushed against the pillars and piles of rags,
empty cans of spray paint and names upon names.
Generations of names.
I learned the tags like I learned the constellations,
So the stars would not be a disorganized scatter across the sky.
Each one now a story, a myth.
I came back and sat on the cement blocks,
sat and waited,
sat and sat.
This desolate patch grew flowers,
lived but a few days
and I was the only one to see the blooms.


(This is in response to a HomeRun challenge to write a poem about one's favorite place in Montreal. I am going to try a few out.)

Bible Poetry Project

"Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support them staying together; for their possessions were so great that they could not remain together. And there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and those of Lot's cattle. -- The Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land. -- Abram said to Lot, 'Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north'" Genesis 13.5-9

Brotherly love, a guise for brotherly hate,
No love lost between,
No generosity of two, of duos, in this
hateful, hot land, between tents.
The wiser brother struck first,
an act of deceptive acquiescence,
with gold bracelets tattooed to his wrist
and arms, his stomach thrust before
him, grown fat and round with
meals of wine and meals of meats,
his shepherd's cloak of finer weave
than any herd attendant would touch.
Let us part and be parted, he offered,
and you may choose, for we are
preoccupied with petty quarrels
and this area grows only rocks.
Delighted to rule, delighted to decide,
Lot believed his brother relinquished
the kingdom of choice,
and gave too much.
To choose well would yield rivers of
milk, and fields of peaches
bursting with amber juice.
To choose otherwise would
pick the cattle to their ribs,
and the breasts' of his wives would
shrivel to lentils,
and only bile would fill the mouths
of the neonates.
Only Abram knew that his brother
had no choice,
that luck alone decided these matters,
not industry, not contemplation.
To Abram went the wreath of Fortune
Lot would lose his wife, his cattle,
his daughters, his words,
and lie by the Jordan.
What if he had gone south instead?

twitter poem of the day

not so good, not so bad,
days like this I should be glad
even if no named affection,
I am certain of this direction.

Genesis 18

Genesis 21.7 "Who would have said to Abraham, That Sarah would suckle chldren! Yet i have borne a son in his old age."

Sarah laughed, as she sometimes did,
at such a silly proposition.
Far less that she should have a son
than that her husband,
now shriveled and old,
should be able to rise
to this occasion,
even less he should make an emission
that could hit an internal star.
No, now his bones that poked through
in places in jagged ridges
dry and brown with sun.
His flesh hung from his shoulders,
pulled down to the ground
in paper thin rolls that pooled
in the belly and over his hips
All hung down, lower than in
youth, lower than in his prime,
low as though crying out to
return to the dust from whence it came.
Sarah could only laugh
that this shuffle footed man with
Arabic black eyes and white
brows that met his white beard,
that stood on the roadway,
cane in hand, forgetting
he had taken three steps before
and three more to go,
would feel the sap of spring
and rise like the buds,
bursting open
one last time.

april poetry project

The April poetry project is taking a religious bent. I want to read the Tanakh (aka, the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible) and write a poem a day inspired by this work of poetry-law-history. It is pretty fascinating stuff and I am rather surprised by what is in there sometimes. Take the brief story of Babel that I read yesterday. I'd always thought the story was about hubris, but when I read it this time, I was rather surprised by the fact that God was just afraid. Weird. People were harmonized, in cooperation, and he was worried about what they could accomplish. There's a Smith's song that goes, "If you think peace is a common goal, that goes to show how little you know."
Anyway, always a good read, and I think a series of mediocre poems are a very fine way to process the text.

babel

What a raw deal for those men in Babel.
To have aimed for the stars
and as one built a brick tower
so high, it frightened the Lord.
The Lord confounded their speech.
He scattered them.
The tower was unbuilt on the land,
a blight, an eyesore, massive and
semi soft, impotent to its majesty.
All who passed it said,
"Men who aim too high fail,"
which is not the truth.
Men did not fail, but there were other forces
at work, the same forces
that have brought down many a man
and reduced him to a mere shadow\
of his former self.
This is the doing of the Lord, who
knew that harmony would make people
slack and lazy.
I can not believe he did not like peace.