Category: Uncategorized

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

“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.

Poetry by Val Cole
—–
POEM:

you sometimes said.

We knew about your aneurysm for the last
twenty-five years, that bulge in your heart

and chest that could swell with blood,
and like a balloon, burst at any time,

killing you in less than nine minutes, you explained.
They told us it was inoperable.

So there was nothing for it but to be constantly afraid
or forget it and live, which we did,

while it ballooned beneath our radar for years.
Until last fall, when your legs and arms began to swell

–even then we did not realize that this meant
your heart was failing–

but there was to be no quick death.
as your heart began to leak blood

into you lungs and chest,
releasing the pressure but slowly smothering,

choking you,
and so your swollen aneurysm grew,

in the last weeks,
like a foreign body,

–yet also a living part of your heart–
until it carried you breathlessly away

in the middle of the night
and you left me on the shore

of a January morning,
alone in the early mourning light.

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

written after the Syrian crisis

It doesn’t matter where we go
Or even where we stay,
We are all immigrants

Some leave home
To arrive as immigrants
Some stay in place
But feel displaced

Who is Turkish these days?
Who is American?
What is a Londoner?

i visit Ellis Island where my grandparents landed
Today In Krakow, Berlin, New York survivors remember

Immigrants run from oppression
Aim for freedom
Some make it
Others don’t

Who are these displaced people?
Who will receive them?
Who will listen?
Let alone who will welcome them?

What am I supposed to do?
Does anything I do matter?
Exhaustion overwhelms while babies cry

Are you listening God?
Are you there?
Kindly pick up the fucking phone
I am calling you!

So many deaths
of ideas,
hopes,
futile whispers trying to be heard

Come now, my friends,
How bad does it have to get
To wake up compassion

Drugged we walk the streets
Drugged we sit and wait for something unknowable to happen

I read Allan Kaprow’s essays on the blurring of art and life
Can poems and still lives heal us
One artist, one storyteller, one poet at a time
Put their souls on the page, the stage, the canvas

Create a minute,
A breath to a quiet the mind

A space, a place,
to be
present to the heart beat

Performed by Val Cole

—–
POEM:

Justice,
before you rule,
Please hear me—
not as counsel,
but as one who has stood in that midnight kitchen
through her words,
through her trembling hands,
fighting for Pêpê’s best interest—
a child the law claims to protect,

yet leaves trembling.
It is not enough
when his hand explodes against her mother’s face,
the sound sharp as a rifle crack,
making the glass in its frame shiver.
It is not enough
when her cheek blooms red,
then fades too fast for the lens to catch.

Pêpê—her mother’s pet name,
whispered like a shield.
At night she lies rigid in her bed,
listening to her mother’s muffled whimpering,
each sob a small surrender.
She learns too early that comfort is dangerous,
that silence is armour.
I hear her in the pauses her mother cannot fill,
in the way fear wraps itself around every word.

She is six.
Only six—
and already her eyes know how to measure a room,
track his every move,
clutch her mother’s skirt as though it’s the only thing
anchoring her to safety.
She memorises the path to the door,
ready to run before she’s learned to ride a bike.

Do you know what it is
to argue a case with your throat closing?
To know that “best interest of the child”
is not a theory,
not a balance sheet,
but a warm bed free from dread—
and still watch the law lean to “access”
and “parental rights”
as if they outweigh
a child’s right to breathe without fear?

He does not feed her.
He does not clothe her.
He does not keep her warm.
Yet he claims the right to hold her,
to call it love,
to shape her into a silence that will last her life.

The mother is shamed as bitter if she speaks,
while he—
who punched a hole beside her face—
walks away smiling.
And Pêpê learns to fold herself into small spaces,
to call fear normal,
to believe this is what families are.

Justice—
I see her years from now,
laughing in a sunlit kitchen,
her footsteps light,
her nights free from dread.
Your choice can make that real.

You are not deaf
to her small voice asking:

“Do I have to go?”

Your gavel can crush—
or shield.

Choose her.

Carve a future
where Pêpê wakes to mornings of peace,
where only her cereal crunches.

Share this:

R.
I sit in my bed in the topmost section of NYC. My mom puts a latke in oil below, sizzling it like a thousand mating cicadas. We light candles. My knees show a second too long and I put them away. Jane gets back with a buttload of books in a bag, the jacket of the team she handles tossed on clavicle like a white sheet on cold nose. No signs of exhale. Clothes smell of oil and I get back to the house, and the white attacks again, some angel sitting on the deck of the next house and the second next and the cement is full of stones that push galaxies into digit pads. I count each angel – 1 6 5 multiply 2 12 10. I know that now which is cool because I didn’t when I left with the sun and I won’t when Anden leaves to the side of the sea in which women don’t show a knee. We should have put a diamond on the issue, but the oil gets in each nook of the bibliothèque as he so helpfully tells me. Each classmate smells my Chanukah. I will meet His dad soon, and I hope He gets the time to visit. The sitting lady in the shadow says He will when His kid comes home post-college. That’s you, yeah? You came back?

O.
Anden is in a land that ends in “ia” and I sit at Hunter. They teach me the art – cucumbers are safe, cake is a danger. Jane’s daughters swear in striped bikinis, flirt, run, and bite at ankles. Mama is under a sheet at the lecture hall dais, a frying pan at the ready. I incubate. The heat is pressing, bursting the blister-urgent matter. Static crackling, and a plane has crashed again. AIR RAID THIS IS what it has been since they left, and chemistry calls hither, a wee-uh marker scritch and a circle and an “I” lying sideways. I reach up and grab the shelf by my bed, the cabinet bursting with red and white, the skirt wrapped tight hiding clink, clink, clink – the three nickels in my bag prepare themselves as chips, trading and getting a ticket, at the ready, Sacha wrestling Ken Davitian is truly a wild ride. Putzes swingin, they seem meshugana like the mints I give a granddaughter each time we light candles as a unit. I can’t believe they let this in a theatre. Wishing He was here in the seat with me, cracking sillies, making laughter, creamy and bright. Wishing He was visiting, sitting by my bed, buckling my backless dress, pulling tubes in my hand, rubbery dj deep in Carnegie Hall, making music. Still playing the strings, yeah? Please keep at it.

S.
My hand dormant on the piano key. I roll through a lifetime teaching piano hand after piano hand better than mine how to make more money than me. He will follow, riding the raging bull downtown. Nothing but pride there, but He can’t know that. He wouldn’t try anymore. I pull tube out of hand, put cottage on whole wheat, hold Pearl hand to evacuate, can’t on own and don’t know why. Why not Him and a hand without the nail paint of a whore and a face I don’t know when I clamp an eye. Tight lid, tighter image, rope tied around hand holding it down, rope around hip, around ilium. To be free on the TV, to be free like ball bouncing back and forth, too far for knowing. NOT A DRILL, the radio will chant. The end ending now, ending a day, ending what? Not knowing. Granddaughter too tall to marry – day will end alone. Not a drill. One chance to find a man worth Juliet Garon half of Him, one chance to make a career out of chemical line and cello and radio announcing. One chance to end that career and make a great-child, the top beautiful thing I ever did. He put me on the farm, where I once took a walk down to the apple tree that nothing fell far from and a bench popped up underneath. Bench moved when I got tired, bench out of Bronx apartment known well by my bone, bench marked by graffiti of punk kid, take me off of the bench. Can He come tomorrow and take me out, out like a light or a dog walker?

S.
The wall of my room felt different today – a trance falling gently into me time and time again, the golden green of the TV bouncing back and forth between men and an ocean. Nixon did a cameo on Laugh-In, too, according to the front and back page of my book. When will He come? Maybe next week? Maybe the day before today? Maybe when Jane will pick up the phone and finally decid to turn the rotary, make the effort of a pencil to not chip her nail, tell me about having a daughter and another one on the way. About the price to create two, a war in a bathtub, a jelly in a pan, a wiggle in and a worm out. He’ll come back, right? After the quarter. After the nickel thrown between a finger and a thumb (they’re different according to Jane Goodall, that tall hippie) and flip onto the edge of a palm and the wine given to a woman. I wonder when I can eat gefilte again with the fancy fork. Granddaughter coming next week according to Pearl. Pearl will put the cream on the bread wrong again. Tube in hand full of brown, angel come back, cement deep in thumb pad, deep in vein. Recline, recline, recline, and revel in a day of reclination, recognition, and reckoning. Do you get it?

ROSS!
He came today. He made it. Told me I’d see Jane soon. Wife said she’d protect him while I wasn’t there. Told me granddaughter was taking chemistry, grandson was playing classical music. He told me past tense is for idiots and they all think Borat is a riot. Told me Anden is waiting somewhere in Romania, and He is waiting somewhere in New York. Told me He’d be there soon. He told me He’d hold my hands. Played piano on the radio. Held my hands. Said I could talk to you and see how I felt.

I feel alright, honey. I feel just alright.

The expiration date stuck to the soul

The sheer size of reality hit

Emotions trapped underneath

The frozen lake

Fear dug deep into the ocean floor

The anger reaching the Hulk’s explosion

Tears of joy, tears of fear

The destination grew closer

The journey came to an end. Box in car,

Chest in church. Box in ground.

They say I should’ve left sooner.
Should’ve known better.
Should’ve read the signs.

But they don’t know how I love
full force,
all in,
even when it hurt.

I stayed in that job long after it stopped seeing me.
Poured into people holding only empty hands.
Tried to fix what was never mine to heal.

And when it all fell apart,
they called it weakness.
I called it shame.

But I see it now …….that wasn’t weakness.
That was love.
That was loyalty.
That was the kind of bravery
they don’t write about in leadership books.

The kind of brave
that doesn’t need applause
only the quiet truth
that I showed up.
That I stayed.
That I tried.

And maybe I stayed too long.
But damn…
I stayed with heart.
I stayed when it was hard.
I stayed while I was breaking.

I used to rush to be grateful for the shame,
like forgiving it fast enough
would stop the sting.

But I don’t have to be grateful
for betrayal,
for staying too long,
for breaking my own heart
just to keep the peace.

I only have to understand it.
See what it showed me.

Because shame didn’t destroy me
it revealed me.
It peeled me open,
forced me to sit with myself,
made me ask the hard questions.

And when I finally let myself be vulnerable,
I realized what I’d been carrying
all along…
wasn’t weakness,
wasn’t failure,
just shame
shame I never had words for.

And naming it?
That was the beginning of healing.
That’s when I started seeing myself clearly.
That’s when brave began.

Each time I answered honestly,
I became a little braver
not because I wanted to be,
but because I had to be.

That’s the thing about shame:
If you let it,
it will teach you who you are beneath it all.

And that person?
She’s not broken.
She’s not too much.
She’s not a fool.

She’s the bravest woman I know.
And now…
I finally see her.

His feathered wings of wanton sin,
soaking etchings of desire—
rippling ’round her rose-coloured bodice,
blazing spring fire.

All consumed until winter fell,
she binds him to her beating heart—
his limbs cloaked in her cold death,
entwined, forever. No longer apart.

She denies him spring again,
her feathered wings unfurl and fly,
waiting for summer swells of heat,
he is torn apart in the sky.

—

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Genres – Desire, Passion, Love, Toxicity, Relaitonships, Freedom, Conflict, Loss, Escape.

Honey pools fill as light spills across her gaze,
catching in the quiet fire of her eyes,
where the world softens,
every step she takes
feels like a laugh
threaded through warm breeze.

After a hike, she grins
tongue lolling, chest heaving,
the kind of smile
that stitches the dirt
and
leaves into memory.

Little toes dusted with red speckles,
white as clouds edged with fire,
tap the earth
Sounding off tiny drums,
marking her passage
through sunlight, soil,
And streams.

Riding home,
she leans into the passenger seat,
sunlight glinting across
her honey eyes,
lazy warmth painting
her gaze
like molten gold pooling in quiet streams.

She tilts her head, stretches, sighs
And grins
a soft reminder that joy
Is found everywhere she
Goes

Are all our paths pre-destined,
or joined by chance alone?

Are we confined in the arrow of time,
or just bound on its flow?

Romance aside, I’m certain—
Strong in my belief,
fate is just a construct,
of evolution’s biology

Yet if I take Pascal’s wager,
and death conceals a twist,

I’ll find the place
you say exists,
and meet you on the drift.