All the Snooze That's Fit to Print

A Fly on the Ground

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on November 6, 2009

A Found Poem And A Poem About Finding

(with a wink and a nod to my sister who knows the art of finding)

“At the age of forty-eight

On the verge of divorce, Rita left

An elegant life in LA to follow

Her dream.” I read these words

On the back cover of the library book

I just checked out on my lunch break.

Fall leaves crunch beneath my sand-colored clogs

As the line echos “Rita left …

To follow her dream …” What is my dream?

I ask my self. What is my dream? I ask the book.

What is my dream? I ask the leaves

That scatter to reveal the hairy black legs

Of an over-sized fly, plastic, grounded — Odd

I think as I walk past. “Excuse me,” the fly

Calls out. “You asked a question. Aren’t you going to listen

To the answer?” What can I do? I retrace my steps

Palm the fly, place it on the edge of my desk

When I return to work. “Okay,”

I say. “I’m listening.”

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The Spider

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on November 5, 2009

Maybe they were dreams you forgot

Slipped from memory

 

Fell between the dowels

Of your bedstead

 

Landed like little black eggs

In the corner where you

 

Admired the tidy pile

Then the steady hatch

 

Multiples of eight

Needle- thin legs

 

Balletic in their precision

The beauty of black

 

Lines definite and cold.

If so, you called me forth. Fed me

 

So I’m yours. Darling.

Don’t run

 

Now that I’m grown

Larger than you dared

 

Imagine. I’ve come to claim you.

Stitch my desire to your skin

 

Your towering legs

Endless arms.

 

– Weave, spin, create

We could play it that way.

 

Or else admit your pain.

Your fear. The delight we share.

 

 

Leaps Tall Buildings … Without Ever Leaving Her Bed

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on November 4, 2009

Enter Dream Girl:

Caped crusader of the world

Of vision, premonition,

Randomly fired neuronal activation. Oracle, oneirophiliac, offerer

Of answers to any question that you’ve dragged into sleep:

Change jobs? Choose a suitor? Get a degree?

With a flip of her cape and another of her flowing tresses – flip, flip, flip,

She’ll send forth a dream

Replete with answers (though disguised in symbol and forgetfulness).

Find Dream Girl in her nighttime palace

Beneath a crystal dome, lit by the gleam of midnight’s star-freckled cheeks.

Her sheets are stitched from moon dust and memory,

Her forehead is dotted with an emerald or sapphire

Glowing from her never-closing third eye.

You fly in your dreams from time to time? She flies

Asleep or awake, up to her Pantheon of gods and helpers:

Morpheus, Phobetor and Phanteus … and Daddy of them all, Hypnos.

Then there’s Jung, delver into the depths of consciousness

Explorer of the universe of the universal. She’s attended by angels

Of creative genius: actors, artists and writers,

Who make dreams incarnate and shower them on sleepless mortals,

Thirsty for imaginary waters. She’s a cosmonaut of consciousness,

Champion of creative solutions to plaguing problems.

She can leap tall buildings without ever leaving her bed,

Is beacon of truth and guidance,

Maps mysteries and invites you

To do the same.

Dictation

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on November 3, 2009

My fingers tap tap tap at the typewriter keys

A heavy black machine, skeletal keys pecking

Wildly at a winding ribbon of midnight’s ink

Words embossed unevenly on onionskin

Periods punch, comma tails fade as they curl into sleep

Parentheses, I decide, can earn their keep

Hooking each end of my smile in place

This is happy work, at a wide oak table

Fellow poets and scribes at my elbows,

Filling every seat

In a room lit by the strange yellow

White light of vision beyond vision

Where we tap, type, scratch

Words into being, in this steno pool

Taking dictation from the mouths of dreams.

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Pastry and Conversation with Cindy on a Night When the Veils are Thin

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on November 2, 2009

She looks good

Spiky hair, frosted,

The way it was between bouts

Of chemo. I call out to her

And we take seats in some cafe

Where we eat pastries and get caught up.

“How long can you stay?” I ask.

It’s good having her back

Talking, the way we used to in the office

When we’d sit at the lunch table

Stuff envelopes, complain about the boss.

She’s doing that now: complaining about her boss.

“In heaven? You have a boss there?” I ask.

She nods. I begin to wonder.

“You did make it to heaven, right — “

She brushes the question aside.

“Heaven basically sucks,” she says.

She tells me she has a little house there, a job that almost pays the bills,

and lots of people to talk to.

“Then death is just like life,” I say.

I’m pleased to hear it. I want to keep doing this

Living thing. Sitting in my dining room, say,

Looking past a vase of yellow lillies

Out the window where a chipmunk scurries up a pine.

“Pretty much.” Cindy exhales the words like a mouthful of smoke,

“Except without your loved ones,” she adds.

“That part really does suck,” I agree.

I take a bite of my Danish. “You’re sure you’re in Heaven?”

I want to ask, but Cindy gets up. Her boss only gave her so much time off,

she needs to get back. That damn boss again!

Just like always.

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Day of the Dead

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on November 1, 2009

Death is in the night.

Death is at your back.

Death makes her naked threats.

Death will stop you cold.

You are in this dream.

The dream continues.

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Setting Intentions

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on October 27, 2009

First step: Engage the senses:

I smell the varnish on the floor and memories of sweat in the air.

Feel my sneakered feet and hear my step squeak as I run, step, hop across the court.

Second step: I visualize the shot. The ball swooshing through the hoop.

And then, having thus prepared, I move to step three:

I try, toss, fail.

Intending doesn’t work, I think.

As I open my eyes,

I notice that my back was to the hoop the whole time.

I was throwing a frisbee, not a ball.

I back up a step:  turn, face the hoop, basketball in hand this time.

Now, I think, I’ve got a plan.

I’ve got a shot.


Cut

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on October 19, 2009

ZOOM IN:

The Gardener aims a pair of clippers at a single blade of grass.

ENTER:

Another pair of hands. They push the Gardener’s hands

Such that instead of the grass, the Gardener hacks an entire lush branch from a rose bush.

PAN TO:
A patch of  sky seen through the empty space, bare of foliage now.

The CAMERA LINGERS on this emptiness.

DIRECTOR’S Q&A:

Q: How can one film the disappointment and the resignation? The impact of the loss?

A: Let the image speak for itself.

Q: Is this a morality tale?

FADE OUT

My Dream of the Pattern Store Closing

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on October 12, 2009

Each pattern slipped long ago into its own paper sleeve

Decorated with a pastel washed and ink-lined vision

Of the future in this skirt or suit

One for every size and stage of life

Careful maps of manufacture

On brittled paper, too fragile now

Even to survive a pen’s crisp tip.

One can understand why the proprietor

Is loathe to give them up, pack them into cartons

Release them to the antique dealer who will admire

Their anachronistic charm, or simply resign them to the curb.

He is as dusty as his dusty shelves, tired of tending

And too tired to give up. People have come to help,

Young people who can imagine but not yet know

The dejection, the shame.

He doesn’t want their good intentions, their optimism.

He’s comfortable with the discomfort of the dust

He knows. But oh, the letting go.


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In This Dream

Posted in Uncategorized by Tzivia on October 4, 2009

This day could have been a dream: I walked through the stone gates of an ancient-looking outdoor theater and crossed an emerald-green lawn to find a gathering of poets under a stand of pine. Sun misted through drenched trees and chipmunks scurried up and down the trunks as the poets read and a man strummed his guitar, bringing a sudden rain with his words. In the midst of it all, I read poems, but the poems were really dreams … or were the dreams poems? I couldn’t quite tell … Anyway, everyone in the audience had a dream to tell and their words danced together and formed this poem:

IN THIS DREAM

A Group Poem by the Audience at the Florence Poetry Society Festival:

Look Park, Florence, Massachusetts, October 4, 2009

Recorded by Tzivia

In this dream I’m stepping onto the train, following Emma, who had already stepped off the train.

In this dream, my friend was doing the hula hoop

In this dream I am punching pillows in the local strip mall.

I am tired, even in sleep.
In this dream I am murdering my ex-husband verbally — with my bare hands.

In this dream I am being attacked by a wild horse.

In this dream I am spending a lot of time with a fellow worker.

I am flirting with an old boyfriend — it is a bit awkward because I am now married.

In this dream I find a hidden room in the house I grew up in.

I have to match up shoes for firefighters to wear.

I am lying on a mattress of dead body parts — which poke me.

In this dream I am walking by the river and see a large green lizard in a pine tree.

I see a small boy trapped in a box car.

My big sisters still think I’m a baby.

In this dream I am running through the woods and I jump up and start flying above the trees and fields and everything –

In this dream my stomach feels funny.

In this dream I am at a zoo in the nocturnal animal’s house and a zookeeper is showing the crowd a blond bat.

In this dream

I was in a play.

In this dream.

In this dream.