Land of My Love

* Cover photo by Rachel Kurtz





22 poems
(5 sample poems below)









I. Creation & the Fall On Want / The Dream of the Ridiculous Man II. Abraham Hammering the Roses / My Ishmael III. Sarah Last Glare of Sun on Salt: Frozen Like Sarah IV. The Exodus What Is It? V. Nehemiah The Comfort of Jehovah VI. Elijah Elijah’s Daughter VII. Psalms The Fall of Petra VIII. Proverbs Proverbs IX. Jonah Stranger on Deck / Un-borne at Sea X. Jesus No Other Roads / The Middle Thief / Silver Cord Severed / This Moment XI. Judas A Case of Mistaken Identity / Potter’s Field XII. Thomas Thomas the Bride XIII. Paul Paul XIV. Prayers For All the Things We Don’t Say / Maker Man

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"As I read, it feels to me as if it's written in blood (to crib Nietzsche), i.e. written from the depths, out of the furnace of experience. Your vulnerability in these poems is striking... Bataille or Blanchot (French writers) talked somewhere about poetry as an 'open wound in language.' That is what Land makes me think of... But (unlike Blanchot,) I also feel its hope. The same contrast I detected in [Fly Free] seems operative here, though on a much more personal level..." - J.M.

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Collection compiled in 2007 to raise $ to travel to Israel

100% of profits going forward are donated to charity

Other chapbooks: Fly Free (2008); The Year Without You (2009)

On Want

I've got the Adam and Eve problem
you know – the FIRST problem
which has somehow never gone away –
if given one million choices
I will somehow find myself wanting
the only one which is not mine to choose.
Conversely, I have a SECOND problem
which is that, having made a choice –
one that is good and amazing and promises
to be worth the high cost involved –
I busy myself in bitterness that
the one good choice cancels out
many infinite other choices, limits
me to the one fabulous adventure.
I have always thought of myself as
low-maintenance, Lord, but as it turns out

I want everything.

Hammering the Roses

Dreaming of Abraham's trek down the other side of the Unknown
where he went following the laughter echoing round corners
Hearing the doors shut behind, and waiting with breath held
to see them open ahead.

And silence,
years of silence.

The answers are mere verses ahead to us, mere paragraphs,
mere pages. We Read. We Know.
13 years slip by as we drink our coffees over pages that were life.
He lost hope, strayed, wishing fulfillment in some way Less
Supernatural or at least More Immediate. As do we.

Magic takes time.

Beauty forms slowly and takes our breath away... but the silence
is too deep too long too much.
We are too busy hammering the roses into shape.


* the idea for the last line stolen from my friend Brian Kehew, who has forgiven me :)

Proverbs

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The Dark Between Subway Stations

lasts too long and seems like nowhere but each nowhere is closer
to the somewhere you want to get to, even if it just looks like the
nowhere before it.


Planting Seeds and Digging Them Up

at midnight just to look and see how they're doing keeps the roots
from ever taking hold. You've got to bury them and let go.


***********

Un-borne at Sea

I do not envy you your task.
You stare dumbly at the lots
which were cast
all this morning as the lightning
ignited the waters until each wave
was cast as a wild flame, carrying
in its crest the nightmare
each of us could not forget since
childhood.

The lots named me. You see, I
am a prophet and not the traveler
I seemed. I am part of a Story
I cannot escape. As far as I could
tell, there were only two endings: in
one I am dead, in the other I wish
I had died. So you see, this is the
same story. You bear no guilt. I have
only come to the edge of the grave

I left behind. Lift me now, as a
mother lifts a child; my legs cannot
hold me for this journey, I need your help.
Your face, ashen, grey, dripping
and full of fear, will be the one to drop me
from this world, just as my mother's was
bright, joyful, and full of faith as she
welcomed me, lifting me to the light.

You have nothing to worry about.
Drop me, watch me, I will fall as swiftly as a small stone.
You will not hear me hit the water
but the thunderclap from one end of the sky to the other
will declare my escape is at an end.
You will hold your breath as the water becomes
as smooth as a mirror,
and I will let mine go
as death becomes a second womb.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

You have spoken blasphemy
You who claim to be the answer to
my prayers, my father's prayers.
His father's prayers. All the way
back to the first man, when the terror
of death was unleashed upon us.

You are one man with a few
followers, who wears no sword;
how could you care about my
people's oppression, how could
you gather Israel, you who walk with
weakness and have no home?

I will come to kiss you in
the garden, to do you a service:
put you out of the misery of
these lies, or force you to make
the stand you speak of, to set
us free. I don't care

what they say, I would have
recognized you, you would have
come on a white horse. As it
is, you weep your nights alone,
you speak in riddles, you heal
a young girl so she can live

another 60 years under Rome.