Synecdoche

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After Synecdoche, New York.

Dear 13

Let's not repeat the mistakes of your older brother.
Good and gone?
I say "Good riddance."
There was about five ends we weren't supposed to make it
through to get to you,
But now you're in the clear, hats off to you,
No catyclisms as predicted as yet.
And despite all the elections and doomsday prophecies
That fell on your brother's watch, not much
Has changed.

Alright, so I ain't asking for butterflies or wedding rings.
Lord knows what I want, and well, I wouldn't mind if your little
Sister 14 had some of those things. My resolution is
To change. My resolution is
To be me. Twelve had this little fear-mongering thing
Going on. And whoever I'm supposed to be here went
Underground. That ain't no good. I need a new era, I'm trying to sort this out,
To surface before Groundhog day. Seems like nobody asks me how I'm doing,
Really. Not in the important things. So bro, bring the
Broom, bring the rain, bring the longhaul, bring the wind, bring the
Change. You're gonna be different, you hear me?
That's what I'm saying.
Everybody knows, if you're gonna be a hero, the hero has
To change.

That's what it's gonna take to do this thing.
That's what it's gonna take to be me.
That's what it's gonna take to love someone.
That's what it's gonna take to live my dreams.

Got it, 13?

Cools, Peace.

The Sun Still Shines

A murder of crows descended on the killing fields
the grounds covered
by mourners in black muttering
racous laughter
a large forested cemetery behind fences
like a secret
they made a maze for the condemned
they cut off all their hair
machine-gunning them as they ran
through the tight trench
while loudspeakers blared a brave fanfare
like it was a video game

My hands could only shiver
cold, no climate-control
just family-planning on the
national level, empty fields
ravens and rows of barns with
terribly mundane
holocaust histories on plaques
terribly mundane
all that work it must have taken to
sort out every last gold filling
build all the resettlement camps
try to prevent escapes
all those bullets wasted
isn't that what the gas chambers were for?
to keep it simple?  just
a couple rows of barbed wire
German efficiency seemed to be used
in retelling the story
a series of incomprehensible statistics
Nov. 3rd, 1943 whole towns of people shot
on the spot they
called in extra guards and even tanks just in case
the survivors were mostly political prisoners
not Jews the instruments used
insufficient rations layers and ribs laid bare
dehumanized you have to read between the
lines; it took them a month to burn the bodies,
they had a crematorium with seven ovens in a town
that maxed out around 40,000 the gas chambers were
just empty garages, and zyklon b is just a clothes disinfectant
that happens to choke the lungs in five minutes sometimes they
just used automobile exhaust.

a ghost town
a gold rush
a genocide just outside
the Lublin city walls

There were just two stiches of
personalization, humanization of
statistics that I saw there:
First a family portrait of a wealthy
family from Lublin, 10 or so
members.  On the left, a black-
haired beauty with deep eyes.
They died separately in Majdanek, Sobibór,
Treblinka, the Lublin ghetto, and Bełżec.
Secondly, there was a single
white high heel in the barn
full of confiscated shoes.  What
kind of woman wears her best
heels to a concentration camp, or
even to forced resettlement?  Denial?
Self-delusion?  Naïvety?   Moxie?   Or did she
hope to save herself through
sensuality?  It was to no avail,
all the same.  In loud voices visitors
mutter, do I hear them correctly?
Disbelief and conspiracy.

The crows mutter mild vulgarities,
Squatting on hallowed grounds
and floating in the sunset like ghosts.

The sun still shines on Majdanek,
Cold, cruel, unflinching.

A Separation

We

Even we

We met beneath firs and twinkling lights

Earth put on her finest

Red wine, twilight sky

Everything seemed right.

It was Autumn when we married

New love under dying leaves

Laughter, across the table

Open hearts, pulsing

Vital signs, two

Eyes become one.

I posted bail.                                                   She tried to take her.

She asked me to abandon my father.                He wouldn't do what's best for his daughter

                                                                      Everything he does, he does for himself

They won't let us part.

His pride wouldn't let him confess                      What right does she have to take my girl?

If you hadn't left, none of this                             Is this how love ends?

Should have ever happened                               Like a unborn baby smashed by a truck?

                                                                      Like a sum of money passed hand-to-hand?

They denied us our divorce                                                       

Here we are, together, apart.                             The divorce papers have all been filed

Every day a broken dream                                 All it needs is a spark

                                                                       Kindness is forgetting

Erasing what was                                             Erase that love    

Now I can go...and if she doesn't come?                                                                       

Dare I go on alone?                                          Here in the mirror I see my father

?                                                                    Each piece of me lost, forgotten

                                                                      Run over by a fault of memory

All I want is for them to be together

Somehow they want me to choose

Elect one of piece of my heart and

Push the other away into the dark

All this time I've done my part to try

Recognizing I was the only one keeping

All of us in the same country, the same city

There's a tear inside of me, and I don't know how

I will ever mend or completely banish this piece of my blood

Or love, how do you expect me to believe in a nonsense like Love

Now we are apart even when we're together, betrayed by the ones...by love.

I

m

b
e

i

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g

B     R      O     K    E     N

I                                          N

T                          W                      O

                                                                        .