What is the inevitable problem of life?
It has everything to do with survival.
The predator always has a razor-sharp eye for his prey.
The prey is looming with no fear,
Only faith to surpass the outlook on life after death.
Why is GOD creations the only ones that kill?
Who is responsible for the bloodshed in the past?
Situations occur at one blink of an eye.
That is how fast it takes for one to die.
That goes for all of us,
No matter what race, color, gender, etc.
We as human the days are numbered.
The time has come for us to become the prey,
And the predators are the once to make us extinct.
And for what! Just to eat each other.
In order to strive from one day to the next.
As the moons glows the night turns into death and mayhem.
When the sun comes out to shine.
Life and deception revealed in the shadows.
LAST DOCTOR’S VISIT
Every visit started with the check-in process
Age, name, doctor, and time of appointment
Have a seat
Elinor says; silly girl I’m in a wheel chair I’m
Already sitting.
Fill out this form
We know the drill
All these years it hasn’t changed
I fill out the form
We wait.
Last night Jennie and i made Greek soup
Which is lemon, eggs, chicken, rice and celery
For some reason I brought a large container
Of the soup for elinor to take home
To eat during the week
She was hungry
Needed something to eat
I gave her the cold soup
She loved it
Jennie an I were happy
She loved it
So sad she ate as if she hadn’t eaten for days.
They called her name
To get her blood drawn
Four attempts to get into her vein
Screaming with each try
The nurse was unable to take
Blood from her port
Finally, they stopped trying
Doctor was ready to see her
Dr. Citron hugged her
He sat, she was in a wheel chair
And didn’t need to sit.
A wheel chair
She hated the wheel chair.
He typed in all her complaints
Looked away from the computer
Moved his chair very close to Elinor
So close their noses were apart
By a few hairs
Elinor, the pain you feel is the cancer progressing
It’s the same cancer that started us
On our journey thirty-four years ago
If the pain is more than you want to tolerate
Take another pill
They are for you to take for pain
Do not worry about how many you take.
You know Elinor, there is no more I can do
She looked into his eyes
Not a word
He said no more blood test
No more ports
No more infusion of iron
“No more anything”,
She said
I know every time I came
There was something, new drug
New procedure
Not this time.
Elinor wanted Dr. Citron
To give her what she wanted
To live
That simple.
They hugged
You know Elinor, you have been with me for thirty-four years
And you always wore black
No, sometimes I wore dark brown.
We laughed
They hugged once again
And he left.
Us alone in the examining room
We gathered our stuff
Walked out without checking out
They will call if we owe them money.
One request
Let’s have lunch
So we ate
Our last lunch
At the hospital lunch room.
They say a name is just a word
until someone is hunted by it.
My great-grandfather carried Herman Jager
like a lit match
small, bright,
but dangerous if seen.
In the camp,
an Aryan spoke it
Herman Jager
and for a second
the name split open.
Two men,
opposites
one holding the gun,
one inside it
but the same sound
passing between them the day they were born
and all the days after.
As if the fire
was unsure which one
it was meant to consume.
After the camps, the name learned
how to blend.
It crossed water,
shed its weight,
smoothed itself
Herman to Henry.
This is how survival sounds:
quieter each generation.
And there is a third name
that never left.
Tzvi.
Deer.
Not a name
a state of being:
to listen for what hunts you,
to move before a branch snaps,
to vanish before extinction.
I answer to Henry.
I inherit Herman.
But Tzvi is the moment
the hunted
becomes the thing a fire can
never consume.
“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last.” ~ Achilles, Troy.
they said the gods once pointed out atmosphere,
days, imagination & then, they created love.
“a sturdy object, love” they said.
then they created poets since poems
compose conundrums & sympathize
themselves into selves, never bare
of moments, of mercies, & the problem
horizons caused by endings like impassable
boulders.
& yet, they had no answers for her. no answers
for her dying way too young. to them, she
was nothing more than a decorative piece.
but to me, she captured daylight, just like the gods,
but maybe that was the problem? maybe it was
jealousy? so they worked slowly, stripping away at her
because the gods always work slowly when they want
to maximize the pain & agony. distant, shadowy, & always
working backwards, unfolding the ruins
of history – all of it like some strange fairy tale
titled, “the small regret that is the human body.”
but i ask you, dear reader: are humans just bodies?
no. we’re homes. we’re voices in almost-vibrant
Kodachrome. the loft of our voices bringing
us relief & because of this, we grow to love
this new body part. in this new fairy tale separate
from the gods where a clock never ticks its incoherent
code in the background, cramping all the air
inside the room. why couldn’t the gods
gift us two instead of one, like hearts?
why when their ears ring with our cries
do they not respond, “we hear you”?
it’s only then we notice they want us to look
at them, catch them in the corners of our
eyes, the way you’d look at a man holding
a gun at your temple. that’s when we turn gray-ish
like fingerprint dusting powder.
can’t you see, dear reader? it’s only then we
realize this fairy tale, our lives, that it’s not about embracing.
them. it’s about embracing ourselves, embracing each other,
embracing time, embracing one’s death in those eyes,
those envious eyes of the gods, & never wanting to escape
one’s self or each other because the ticking, that ticking
you still hear, no matter what of that ticking, if you keep
listening to it the way the gods listen to our heartbeats,
too closely, you’ll realize that ticking all along
came from a bomb strapped to our bodies
given to us by the gods.
