VERSEWRIGHTS
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives

Paulie Lipman


Schematics

Colorado
does not hold the patent
on tragedy, but
we understand its machinery
 
The rest of the country
can complain about
the casting of Ben Affleck
as the new Dark Knight
but Batman
means something different
in Aurora, Colorado
 
Everyone else
can debate about bullying
but we’ve already seen
one version of the end game
in Littleton
It is a first person shooter
 
Y’all can watch Kobe
get off a jumper while
we have seen him foul,
get off, and then get off for it
 
Ours is a place
still recoiling from a time
when the Klan used to march
so deep down Broadway you’d think
the White Tide was in and everyone
leapt in for a baptism
 
We are haunted
and see the same phantoms
behind the eyes of
Boston
Sandy Hook
Oklahoma City
All of us
praying for exorcism
and that one day the spirits
will finally
stop howling
​

Hideous Potential

Saying you’re Jewish
is a panic fire
that beckons every frustrated artist
come to render you, unwilling canvas
to their distorted impressions
 
Portrait your feet with
Mel Brooks’ tap dancing Hitler
Abstract your nose, hideous
Shakespearean caricature
Pointillist legs, in flight from Egypt
Norman Rockwell across your eyelids
an unpretentious
H O L O C A U S T
 
Their medium
chalk, spit, or ash
never bothered me
Even shit
washes off
 
It’s my own blood
that frightens me
Within it
a most hideous potential
 
My body
a breeding ground
worthy of Mengele
threatening to
birth from my shoulders
the snarling heads
of Orthodox Brooklyn slum lords
eyes boiling profit margins
teeth locked ferocious
around the word
schvartze
as if it were their
life’s meat
 
My savage ancestry
concocts the hands of
 
every money lender Jesus evicted
from the temple, resurrect
rip cesarean from my hip bones
hoarding every wish-cast penny
back into my own pockets
 
Mouths welt up, pox
along my chest jabbering:
“Don’t bring that Shiksa home”
“Mind your mother”
“Marry your own kind”
“Obey”
“Chosen”
“The Chosen”
“We are the Chosen”
 
Benjamin Netanyahu
may be the anti-christ
but he doesn’t live in Hell
He bursts full form
from the knot in my forehead
covered in viscera, roaring Zion’s
will to power in a deformed glossolalia
of Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Mein Kampf
every jagged syllable translated into:
“Uprise the Holy Land, even if
 the flames devour us all!”
 
Even weakened
by fanaticism, blood
don’t wash off
Not without taking
some skin with it
 
This vestigial freak show
in all its sloganeering, not once
mentioned God
Not one Omein
among the lot of them
Adonai, Hashem, no prayer
not    never
 
I will not
have my voice stolen
for abomination
nor uplifted eyes
bowed head
or bent knee
These
are all reserved
for God, no matter
the name
 
I re-claim
these frail insides
flawed they may be
I have enough, the limbs
given me
Hideous potential,
I carve you out
cast your poison
from my blood
I will give my skin
leave your screeds
and bare the scars
as a reminder
of just how far
all of us can fall
​

Untitled

War breeds
strange ingenuity
a savage intellect
limited vocabulary
bark/howl/shriek
all to mean:
My Kind/Over You
My Land/Not Yours
My God/Only God
 
Resistance
will always be
  • more eloquent
​
Picture

Paulie Lipman's profile

Bellows

The human body
is an accordion
constructed by
an unseen craftsman
Perfect in form, but hollow
until a musician moves it
to beauty
 
Buttons
for a mind that
can shift perspective
and mood
 
Ivory keys
bones
when struck in different combinations
determine an existence
major or minor
 
Bellows, for lungs
that can scream
wail
lullaby
or weep
 
And when
the last tarantella is
wrested from its frame
it is laid to rest in
a velvet lined box
and the song
the legacy
is laid to rest
in the wind
​

A Jew and Vocabulary

​1.
Holocaust: A sacrifice consumed by fire
Read with the right pace and intention
it almost...sounds sexy
 
holocaust is
ready for prime time
pops all the right demos
holocaust worldwide
crushes Instagram
Oscar nomination locked
#hashtaggameonpoint
holocaust bodies Facebook
holocaust bodies museums
bodies mausoleum
holocaust bodies
are museum
 
holocaust
lower case
holocaust
notsingular
Have been
many many many
Not proper noun
No “The”
holocaust has been
going going
Germany
This country
Allcountries
all times
all burning
all sacrifice
No ownership
No one
We Jews
don’t own holocaust
Not proper noun
just common ash

2.
Pogrom: the organized killing of
many helpless people, usually
because of their religion or race
 
pogrom
punishes the tongue
comes out strangled, limping
dust tongued Yiddish
We Jews
owned this
Language/memory
forever escaping us
like us, forever escaping
 
pogrom is not/never
sexy, not
go-to simile
pogrom is plural
lowercase
pogrom is
pre-film
38 A.D.
1066 A.D.
1113
1563
1821
1881
1901
1938
no pics
no monuments
pogrom
is Warsaw
is Kishinev
Bialystok
Kiev
pogrom is
holocaust’s unsung
older brother
no website
Google for
casual interest
Wikipedia
required reading
research paper
pogrom is
thousands
upon thousands
Jews
synagogues
family trees
burned
burned
still burning
 
No slogan
No museum
No hashtag
No more numbers
Not from me
not your research paper
You
go find the burning
You
get kerosene
in your eyes
My throat
is too full of soot
from swallowing
all of this
You
go find the English for it
Let your teeth
go grey, sifting
through our urns
gasp our ashes
and choke
​


Picture

Comments?

***

​Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights.
© 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.:
Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems
Catalog Poems
Epic Poetry
Fairy Tale Poems
Fishing Poems
Funny Poems
Ghazal Poems
Haiku Poems
Love Poems
Math, Science & Technology Poems
Ode Poems
Pantoum Poems
Question Poems
Rondeau Poems
Rose Poems
Sestina Poems
Shakespeare Poems
Ship, Sail & Boat Poems
Sonnet Poems
Tea Poems
Villanelle Poems
Work Poems

To translate this page:
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives