Morbid fear

I have an absolute phobia about halloween.

Its not the ghosts, spooks, creepy carved pumpkins, not the brats leaning on
doorbells or crouched on rooftops clutching boxes of eggs to hit homecoming commuters...it isn't even the toilet paper streaming everywhere, as if a world of ghosts suddenly felt the need to wipe their invisible butts

...its my addiction to freakin candy corn.

There's so much of it left over after the holiday it sells at .50 a bag...couple of weeks later, you can find the .50 bags for 75% off.

My hero, Lewis Black, has thoroughly studied and researched candy corn. It turns out only one batch was ever made in the late 1800s and it just keeps getting recycled annually because no one eats the stuff...except me...and most idiots I offer it to.
These same folks are the ones who keep PEEPS in business, a candy standard I cannot imagine ever sinking to.

And, i might add, i was recently shocked when I walked into Walgreens and found a wall of halloween candy in bags, 2/$3.00. Peering over the bottom of my split lens (aka bi focals) I noted bags of candy corn shapes...chocolate cats, witches hats, caramel colored bats, yellow corn cobs, and fat orange pumpkins with tiny green stumps crowning their chewy teeth rotting little selves.

Like much of what's going on, its a conspiracy to kill us early to make room for the next group who need the beds.

poem

Love In Four Languages
(from the Book of Translations)

a book of Kurdish melodies
a book of Arabic proverbs
a books of Turkish memories
a book of English adorations

Tonight
come to me
in a dream
On this night
we will be born into one
from this dream
Outwit the quickness
of your thoughts
that are unsure
Outwit the alertness
of my heart
that is trembling
Open softly
the door of me
Translate this love
in all of your languages

I
Kurdish
I am watching the stars
Whisper nothing, even less
Shelter my eyes with your hands
Open your rose petal lips
drink the cream of my skin
I am in exile
Unable to eat or sleep, ecstatic
in shrouds
in ashes
on the shore of a continent
that carries your name

II
Arabic
The moon ascends
Seven years the moon rose
then fell as I waited
at seven gates
Pale as this night
My heart lived shut
like a pearl
Trampled by war
at the borders
of sunrise and sunset
Men were bees
whose wings carreid honey
swarming to nest
before you

III
Turkish
I am listening to the Sea
It is you
that enters me
without words
without mercy
Sharp as a knife
The steel of your fingers
crushes my bones into stars
Your cries are my cries
I fly
on the breath of your soul
on the scent of your skin
Swear as I do
we are clear, we are
surrendering nothing
to all heaven and earh
Say-
you take
what is yours

IV
English
Constellations move
in your eyes, I pour
down your chest like soft rain
you shudder
under the fall of my fingertips
Columns of marble
Your thighs are veined with sapphire
My hands gather you
soldier, my king
you are here without words
or maps
at the mouth of the Nile
Your history is written
on the waves that dissolve
between my lips
You have slept in my blood
While I slept on a bed of fire
I am on the bridge to Damascus
I am beneath the Polar star
I am naked before Heaven
I am shameless, speechless, blind without limbs
in your arms
You call my name
I dissolve in a bed of tulips
Your hands pull out my life
You fill me with yours
I am ablaze
thirsting in a garden
that glistens with tears
You call my name
your tongue carries me water
I find you
above me
wordless
waiting
still as a storm
your heart exploding
inside me

R.S.
2004

Light damns

On the train coming home today, reading about the obsfucation inside our community I had a flashback to 1973. I was standing in Ansche Chesed in the rabbi's office the day my father was nifter. I was begging him to intervene and stop my mother from cremating him. His response was, he's your mother's husband, I can't intervene, its her right to do as she wants.

My father was already considered 'dead' by the Jewish community; he married a shiksa, his own famiy sat shiva for him and never spoke to him again. Our jewish neighbors didnt speak to him (or us). For everyone, my father was dead long ago...it didnt matter what my mother did with him, his body, I counted him as a Jew, the rest of the world had already discarded him. I doubt he would have received a jewish burial or had been allowed to be laid inside the cemetary among Jews if the rabbi had helped us. Years later after obtaining his ashes from my mother, he was buried finally, outside in a special area with others not allowed a space among jewish dead.

Its not easy being 'chosen', too many wrong choices and you might as well be in an ari miklat.