The watch post

The watch post
above the “princes”
On looks into the hotel
Instead
Toward the Egyptian border
And the smuggling paths.

The soldiers know
Why the tourist
from the 3rd floor
Above the swimming pool
Smiles with embarrassment
To the water boy;

But not how convoys
Of drug And human beings
Traders
Pass by
Under their open eye.

09.2006

A limb

God didn’t
smile at me today.
Many eyes I’ve met
And yet
They all had
A missing element
That I can’t explain
In words. God
Didn’t smile . I also
Missed you a lot..
There is no doubt in my mind
That mid June rain
At 3 AM
While I was alone
Walking down the street,
And god didn’t;
Was meant for me.
I was almost redeemed.

6.2007

Wings

Wings
I have wings.
I dream with them
The smog.
Dream them into
Escape; the stores,
The busses, the coffee shops.
The pavement reads me as
I slitter finger tips On it,
Hovering.

Then I collect
My whishes
Into a small vessel,
Too often emptying it
To the green garbage can
In the back yard. Closing
The lid shut
So that the stanch
Wont knock me down,
To the ground.
I’d like to believe

That they await
For someone else
With a little less
Wings and
Much stronger hands.

Skin

Sometimes
I try to keep the air inside
So it will last. They said
My heart is beating too fast
So that my body
Deconstructs

There aren’t any bandages
Big enough
To cover it up.

Sometimes
I forget that I’m not
A beautiful butterfly
Destined to emerge
From all this blood;
Sometimes I must.

Outside/ A.G.K

Yesterday the window broke again
to a thin silence sound
So I could hear the racket
of the ordinary people in the street.
The air was good
Outside.
As I was leaning against the windowpane
the glass splinters re-drew
the lines in my hands.
The couple that walked down the street
will try endlessly to wash the stains
out of their white cheerful cloths.
I would have told them then
that this blood stays.
And stays. And stays.
Had they asked me.

It was good air outside
As I was breathing in the voices
to my lunges,
I had almost forgoten
all about the splinters in the fist of my one hand
and the lines of a destiny, that is not mine,
in the palm of the other.
I was almost taken over
by the racket.

It was good air outside; I’d
almost forgotten you.
That’s how good it was.

Escapism/ A.G.K.

A canvas curtain you bought for 450 shekels
And you talk to me
about contemporary art. Falling apart
walls and a bathtub
from the beginning of the previous century
And you speak of architecture and interior decoration.

Let me tell you this much,
The guy who sawed this curtain
used two canvas sheets
and a string; Then sold you fifteen
minutes work of his at the cost
of two days worth
of yours, and you thanked him, of course.
And it’s quite naïve of you to think
that the building’s engineer,
if such a thing even existed back then,
thought of architecture when
he received instructions to build
that many apartments
for that many people in the days
of the second immigration waves.

So,
what you do have at home
is actually two torn apart canvas begs,
dirty ceramic tiles,
crumbling walls and exposed pipelines.
And you have me, in case you forgot.
So lets talk of something else.
Escapism.
Let's talk about escapism;
If sophistication is what you’re after,
we should at least get the term right.

True Lies/ A.G.K

Even when I told you that I lied,
Even then,
I was lying.
I’m not accustomed to telling the truth,
I go where my tongue takes me to,
I go.
I die going.

Because it’s
Difficult
To breakdown truths
into
Small measurements
of exposure.

There are other words
Less calculated
That say
A lot.

But I’m already used to it,
I am a skilled craftsman.
It comes with the territory
It comes
Stealthily.

Behold how every door is slammed shut;
Still the tongue recites success,
Every time I fall apart

Eulogy/ A.G.K.

When the years grow
Shorter
The letters are engraved
Deeper into the marble;
The void is being dug into
a painfully familiar shape.
The eyes too
Are used to
the welcoming darkness.
The eyes,
Are used to.

I’ve strained myself immensely
So that the cover will be written
And not what lays within.

There Needs To Be/ A.G.K.

There needs to be a zipper,
I tell you.
So it can be treated

My chest, the temple of the heart

So to cut
And saw,and saw, and cut
To no count. To treat.
There needs to be.

If you are to stamp,
than with the heel
Thin, thinner still
so that no hope will Remain.
If so, then Death, if that
Than love.
There needs to be a zipper
and you need to know how. Where
to unstitch, to stitch and to amend .

There needs to be a zipper
To ease the madness
There needs to be a zipper there
needs to be a lock on the door
and a gourd at the entrance.

Second Hand/ A.G.K

Second hand

My sadness,
I’d like to close in the palm of may hand
So I could hand it to you and say
“Here, here is where my sadness lays”

And slowly slowly strangle it. Look at the mirror
and utter new silences. Not to feel a used person again.
Rewrap my self.
Here. Look at the box. It has been left untouched;
and when you’ll open it
I’ll hand you my open palm
And say

Take

Apparently/ A.G.K

Apparently

Heavy, Round raindrops are sliding down the drainpipe.
Soon I’ll be leaving. Keep those tears in a small box wrapped
With a ribbon as a sign
you’re staying behind.
Ripple spreading
In the puddles of the street
and I’m
abandoning
Your touch that folds into the skin.
When I’m back I’ll lay down and
let you mold it into a form that contains
our disappointments. The rain knocks on the locked
window of what used to be our bedroom.
On my return the sun will light
all the things we dared not to see.
Like back then, when we first met
and you said so confidently
That there is no big love, just small people that yearn so much;
Today we’ve discovered just how small we really are.

Darling, apparently you’re truly never wrong.

Abracadabra/ A.G.K

Abracadabra

Give me magic illusions
How much illusion there is in the world
A never-ending TV series that I watch
And do not recognize myself in it
Here too a jagged hat
And a rabbit
with bruised paws (applause, people, applause)
And spells the tongue rolls
Into wide sleeves
and hidden drawers
rolls and rolls and ridicules

Let me jump out
of the hat.
Let,
let me do that;
I too can chatter scorched slogans
Let me and I’ll jump, instead
of this bruised rabbit
With it’s haunted gaze.
(Ho god, the piteousness)How much illusion