Vamanos, mi hearties.

I'm out of Boston on a junk bus heading home and couldn't be happier. In no time will I be sitting back with friends for hours doing nothing, just being friends. Perhaps we'll drive to Goodwill, perhaps up to People's State Forest, or the American Legion State Forest, maybe we'll even head up to Sky Top Lanes for some bowling/Big Lebowski reenacting, but most likely, we'll just stay at one of our homes for hours doing nothing, just being friends. 

We'll brag about our triumphs, and perhaps we'll mope about our failures, but we'll be happy to just be together again.

Oh Barkhamsted the memories bubble back.

I Cannot Find it

There is poetry in the fact that the divergence between Man and Mouse occurred only 90 million years ago; but I cannot tap the well to whisper its secrets to me.

There is poetry in the New England seasons; in train rides up to beach houses and making love with the Atlantic as witness; but I cannot find it in my pencil to tickle theses things on paper.

There is bitter poetry in returning home slowly; and I am its victim.

There is poetry in your face; it's weird, and I hope you recognize that.

There is poetry in childhood, obviously.

There is poetry in Bones, but aquariums and museums are only minor libraries.

There is poetry unresolved, in ruins, everywhere, thanks to you; and I am left to pick up the pieces.

Things I Remember

My wallet has an "Izze" label stuck on it.

I can remember the day I pulled it off the bottle and stuck it there: July 8th, 2007. I was sitting sipping the drink on the lawn of Pratt, Brooklyn bustling on around me.

I can remember what I wore on the Fourth of July, 2006: my tan corduroys with the moose patch, my 'Brandeis' shirt that Max had gotten me, and a white button up. I remember because that was the first time I had traveled alone, I was going to Europe.

I remember the birth and creation of almost all of my written stories. It's strange that now, almost a year to date since the Underdog was finished, it's being published in the Connecticut Review. Should I be happy? I don't feel it. 

I remember lazy afternoons in the summer, driving around with friends, auditioning for shows, screwing around by the river.

I remember the first time I got drunk; off of absinthe and screwdrivers beckoning in 2008; and how in my drunkenness, and sickness, I thought of the same people I continue to think about today.

I remember when I first picked up a pencil and put it to paper to vent my frustration.

I remember my first kiss; gambled away lamely in a game over the summer.

I remember my second kiss; on stage, perhaps worse, because it was to Blanche DuBois.

I remember my third kiss; I liked it because we had just finished Annie Hall, and you said I reminded you of Woody Allen in a cute, not-so-dorky manner.

I remember Europe.

I remember getting drunk in Dublin.

I remember driving to Beach Rock with a girl I liked, then sitting there for hours simply surveying the beauty of New England in the summer.

I remember acting.

I remember leaving home.

I remember the desert.

I remember rain forests.

I remember the first bird I ever identified on my own.

I remember aiming at a chickadee with my slingshot, and the grief I felt when, for the first and only time, I hit my target.

I remember finding the junkyard.

I remember my old cell phone with its produce stickers stuck on everywhere.

I remember you teasing me about my dorkiness, I didn't mind.

I remember walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with a girl I liked; nothing happened.

I remember reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass on the Fourth of July.

I remember finishing A History of Love and thinking of whatsherface.

I remember when I made the conscious decision to call her whatsherface, but then again, I've done that with everyone else since whatsherface, so I guess she was the first.

I remember meeting the first person my age whose writing blew me away.

I remember meeting the second person my age whose writing blew me away.

I remember I told you to write, now you do, and it kills me.

I remember the first time I read Arthur Rimbaud, it was something of a daze, ecstasy, and amazement at its beauty.

I remember the first time I spoke on Radio.

I remember getting in a car accident.

It's weird but I don't have that many memories.

Easels Us

This one is a bit dated, I wrote it the Tuesday after we elected our president. It definitely could've reflected more hope.

I could trace my finger beneath 

the fine curve of her jaw.

I could place my palm into 

the resplendent valley between her shoulder blades.

Your soft contact soothed me, 

and your eyes gently told me the sweetest things all reason forbade. 

The smiles you flashed between our lips were all the joys that ignite 

just as your kisses were the scriptures I sought to spend my life interpreting; 

the poetic verses I still long to recite.

The soft touchings of our fingers were the scratchings of pencils on doodle pads - ourselves.

We painted passionate portraits over each other with our hands. 

And for a few days in November, we were 

Monet

Van Gogh

Dali

Picasso.

Two People I Never Knew

For the past five weeks or so, the thought of me returning to my grandparent's house has been constantly on my mind. I've had fervent thoughts of younger weekends spent in their back yard, climbing the trees my dad had climbed, walking the neighborhood to the now decrepit playground, and the Autumn walks in the botanical garden reserved solely for the males in the family, a Thanksgiving tradition I never quite got, still being only 13 at the last of these walks, ever. (However I still remember one of those particular walks, in which I found a 5 euro piece in a wishing well, and I took it out of sheer curiosity and intrigue, and on another occasion, my older cousins finding a rock that looked remarkably like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's heads, but that was a reference far above me, I never cared for cartoons.)

And yet, I find it strange, just that I have had thoughts of returning to this place that I can no longer go. My grandparents on my father's side have been gone for about five years, now, and that house is past.

Why there was cheap imitation-wood siding on this, and all the other houses in this all Irish neighborhood? What was the use of the Buick parked in the garage? Never to be used, and sold instead of given to me as a present for having gotten my license, I guess that was perhaps one last "fuck you," from my uncles to their younger brother, my father... but I always wanted not to think that. And what of the pads on the old lawn furniture that never seemed to age, having reached their asymptote of fading and being left out on too many sunny and rainy days; Or the seven or eight whiffle ball bats - equally faded - what was their story? These were all mysteries to me, questions that I longed to have answered each time the family traveled there, but they never were. 

What I could figure out, through my constant love of searching through memories left in bureaus and night closets, was that my grandfather loved Louis L'Amour novels (I found a ton when I rooted through his things, once), and that he golfed and worked for IBM, as well the fact that he was an advance scout in some regiment serving in Europe in World War II, and that he saved many lives, got wounded, then refused to accept his Purple Heart because the man in the bed next to him had gotten his testicles blown off, and that his sacrifice, getting shell blasted into his skull, when compared to the man next to him, was nothing. That man would never be able to have children, and I never told my grandfather this, but I thought he was the most honest man I had known, I looked up to him, I really did, and a map of his regiment's movement into Germany hangs above a book case that he made me when I was seven. 

However, I don't think he took too kindly to my father after he converted to Judaism to marry my mother, which is strange that, in recent light, searching through family records, my father and uncles found that our origins, my grandfather's grandfather, was originally a Russian Jew who shed his identity upon coming to America. Of course with a name like Moses, I don't know how he managed.

My grandmother was even more mysterious. The epitome of frail, she had thinning white hair and a very hunched back. She was very loving, and I remember her simply being thrilled to be in the presence of her grandchildren. I always thought our religion had nothing to do with her love, but perhaps I was wrong, I was only a kid, remember. The most I could ever gather about her was that her great uncle had been a drummer-boy in the Civil War, and he was shot and killed. That always made me laugh when, in recent years, I would look at my drum set and my drumming performances with my high school jazz band. It would always subtly hit me that I was playing this music which was the embodiment of a people that my great great great uncle had fought to free, whether he was for it or not, that was another story, but I always figured there was a direct correlation between my great great great uncle fighting in the Civil War and my playing the jazz.

Of course, there is one memory I have in specific which shines resplendent in my repertoire of longing.

I'm not sure what the circumstances were, but I found myself alone with both of my grandparents when I was about seven, maybe eight... but no older than nine, I'm sure; and they took me to a dinosaur museum! (All the excitement I had is brimming over the cup in that exclamation point.) It wasn't the Museum of Natural Science, I remember, it was in the country, or at least out side of the city. I remember holding both of their hands as we championed through the darker halls of skeletons and stone. A funny thought strikes me now, that this was the first time I had witnessed anything older than my grandparents, these dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the rest of the trip to the museum is lost in the annals of my mind, but the one reminder I have of it is a green and black dinosaur figure. It's a T. rex, with poorly painted on teeth, yet it still managed to scare me at the time. I look back on it now and can do nothing but smile. Perhaps the most meaningful gift I ever got from them was this dinosaur given on a rainy day trip to the museum in April.

These are the memories that I've gathered from my visits to my grandparent's house in Long Island, the last I think when I was 13, after my bar mitzvah. I remember they didn't attend, but I still loved them. It's a hallowing thought to think that there are questions about my origins that I will never know, because of their silence. and I can never go back to that house in that all Irish neighborhood, I'm sure someone's already moved in, anyways. 

I guess I just wish I knew them, really, that's not so much to ask is it?

The Rabbit's Wail

The Rabbit’s Wail 

“Sometimes I ask myself whether or not I’ve heard the shrill cry of a rabbit as it dies; I already know the answer; I have, but I feel I need to ask myself this just to remind myself where I’m from; to remind myself that, in the city, no ones heard that sound, or even cares.”

I teetered on my bed, slightly drunk, talking to myself, and imaging anyone responding.

“Yes,” I nodded to myself. “Yes I’ve heard that sound, and, uh, yep.”

I nodded like a fiend, agreeing fervently with myself before laying down to sleep, it was past two in the morning.

It’s not like I’m a morbid guy, it’s just… being from the country, that’s always been a pretty identifiable sound… and the fact that some people have never heard this cry – this shrill wailing that breaks through the ears like water freezing, splitting a rock, or freezing underground, creating hoarfrost… it is a very frozen sound, really – but the fact that some people haven’t hear it makes me feel as if perhaps I can’t connect with them. But then again, I’m not going to just ask anyone if they’ve heard a dying rabbit wailing… gosh that sounds eerie.

But it’s not like I’m a morbid guy, really. I don’t think so, at least.

“Usdan Reinstein, the morbid.” I muttered to myself from my bed, the vodka still swishing in my gut.

It’s just a strange phenomena, I suppose, the rabbit’s wail. You would never out right mention the wail itself, but it’s kind of assumed if you’re from the country, or at least rural New England, that you’ve heard this cry for help, this plea for death to come quicker than from the iron jaws of a coyote.

In the city, in Boston, there are no wails. There’s the screech of sirens and horns, the moaning of wind between concrete canyons, the dismal groaning of old metal skeletons; bridges, but it’s all alien. Sure everyone hears it, but it’s ignored; it’s just another irritation outside one’s own cares, it’s irrelevant.

The rabbit’s wail is different; it can’t be ignored. It’s held brutally in front of you, a bloody, wretched sound writhing in nightmarish squeals. As you lie alone in bed it’s the one thing keeping you awake, the one thing audible in the silent night.

 

            

Clutch

Am I a weak man? 

Or do I simply need a soul to clutch?

One to tenderly hold me, an anchor through affectionate touch?

I wish you not to become just another meager source of raw material for lamed stories,

as others have become over my ages.

No, I want the happiness, the soothing tranquility - like the soft first snows - of your presence to echo boldly though these pages. 

I wish not to be cast away - dash'd upon the rocks after failed flight.

I want to work on life.

But I am a frail, ill-guided boy, 

drunk tonight. 

Snows

Our snow is too long overdue,

while these harsh chills are nothing new.

My window with the lights turned off shows clear the city.

I stare at my reflection in the glass, this metropolis in me,

and look on at myself in pity.

Tonight is simply a quiet night and nothing more.

But I will over think all, and under judge much,

until I, weak, find comfort on this hard carpet floor.

Drunk tonight I smother my right hand,

the engine of my creativity, if I can even afford such a word.

For I fear my thoughts are truly dull, horrifyingly bland. 

I will wait for our first snow,

the flakes we long to remember home.

While I can only hope our love will tenderly grow,

else I should whither, a dead plant, alone. 

Three Poems Written on a Train From Rockport to Boston

Three Poems Written on a Train From Rockport to Boston

I

Thinking

I walked along a rocky Atlantic beach,

wet sands under my worn shoe,

            and my mind drunk on thoughts of you.

November’s cool raw beauty blows over my face this morning as I take this constitutional,

            and the scents of sea salt

and of your hair

mingle on my nostrils

And as a blue sky begins to clear over the beach

I am thinking of my returning to you.

            We are two almost within reach.

 

II

Thought

 

And in my drunkenness do my thoughts turn to you.

            Happily and innocently, as a terrier to its owner.

And while the night is a waste without us together,

            how my thoughts remain steadfast on your heart.

 

III

And I can now

 

With a gray sky over head,

and trees aflame in November,

will I hope to find us together someday.

            Because New England is the romantic engine of Autumn. 

                        And I can now smell the wet leaves in the air;

                        And I can now smell your fine black hair;

                        And now can I smell all my cares

                                    fleeting as we embrace .

Fortune Cookies

I have a lot of fortunes from fortune cookies,

at last count something like 57...

... does that mean that I am, in fact, fortunate? Or just that I have no life? 

This question eats at me day in and day out.

I have a lot of fortunes from fortune cookies,

at last count something like 78...

... some read that I "might prosper in the field of medicine,"

other's advise me to "do something different, today."

But I am happy in just reading these moot suggestions,

these gems of brief poetic predictions,

because there is nothing quite as fine as the laughter of friends and loved ones.

I have a lot of fortunes from fortune cookies,

at last count something like 92...

... and I know I am fortunate; in simply knowing you.

Call Me Juvenile

Call me juvenile,

but I cannot wait to celebrate the end of a presidency that dictated my malleable youth

while beckoning in a new which will glorify it.

I am drinking early this election day,

a toast to the last of naivety,

welcoming in responsibility.

Call me juvenile,

but I cannot wait to celebrate tonight with you.

To reassure myself that this world is geared in the right direction.

To tell myself that we are the happiest people in this Atlantic city.

I am drinking early this election day,

a toast to the last of naivety,

welcoming brighter days, warmer relationships, and truthful love.

I will drink it down bitterly, because those cold days will not go down without a fight, those curmudgeons,

 but I will love every ounce. 

The Human is Resplendent

I

Lungs

In a bed two people breathe quietly,

on their own,

each exhalation a gift to the other.

The Lungs in their infinite beauty are two lovers connected though a primary Bronchi;

two children holding hands.

their happiness is our breathing.

Surely the intimacies of breath,

intricate as lace; warm huddled mice,

most sincerest of human exchanges,

could never be replicated by anything mechanical.

In terms of this exchange, Technology is the enemy of lovers.

Why do we need Artificial, Iron Lungs?

It's enough to make one fall to pieces,

thinking about why humanity would ever replace this beautiful organ for a cold metal engine that cannot feel, nor ever replicate the finesse of the respiratory system, no matter how necessary.

I'd die than live without this original tissue.

II

Heart

I know I got a bad reputation, and it isn't just

talk

talk

talk.

The heart will selflessly love but never shed its innocence; its first.

It is only natural.

The heart is a Sequoia, the matriarch of giant pines.

In its life, it is necessary for fires of love to rage and burn,

leaving scorch marks at the base, closing in on the heartwood, never to be forgotten;

but clearing the areas around the great heart, all for it's own survival.

"You are in love, poetic fires ignite you."

If Rimbaud saw a Sequoia, he would cry.

One can be older than the Western World,

Older than Christ, today.

Can I even grasp this?

A tree older than most anything?

With respect to the Little Prince's Baobabs,

Sequoias are the beating heart of my world.

To plant one is selfless.

The heart knows its got a bad reputation, and it isn't just

talk

talk

talk.

The heart is a selfless muscle.

III

The Spinal Cord

(The Final Chord)

I'm interning at a college radio station, and when I walk towards the building,

I can't help but admire the radio tower.

It IS a spinal cord.

The show I play is a jazz show, "The Soulful Truth," it's called.

We transmit these truths through this spinal cordial radio tower to the lonely souls that may be listening.

Jazz is a sad music, and perhaps the only music fit to play over the Spinal Cord.

It's history is weeping.

Early, tragic death wastes talent like paper aimlessly crumpled and thrown into a wiry garbage bin;

missing,

it lands on the floor to collect dust in the shadows.

Coltrane died of liver cancer;

Mingus ended of an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he kept playing his bass until it finished him;

Monk by a stroke after six years of declining health, refusing to play his cherished piano.

No, Jazz is the only music to play over a Spinal Cordial Radio Tower.

Sad truths echo through it,

as do they in everyone.

IV

The Fingers

(each a painter)

Tiny pencils; so creative are the phalanges -

fingers

- from them does sprout all poetic love

all sketches of affection.

Impressionist rings encircle a fine digit as Monet sits on the bank of the Seine.

I tremble to think of what fires were going through Van Gogh's hands as he painted Skull with a Burning Cigarette...

Then only 4 years later births Starry Night;

the next year he walks into a field and shoots himself in July.

Years later Picasso would shock the world as his fingers became revolutionaries.

My hands? No where near as thrilling as theirs, but I give it thought.

A boy traces his fingers over her neck,

circling 'round her ear;

under her chin;

over her collar bone;

all in crafted rhythms hinted at through simple ink drips.

Soft and sweet do the fingers write our thoughts on the smooth skin of others,

but only when given the gift of such a fine canvas, a lover.

A girl sits over a sketch board, pencil in hand;

and he, behind her, shades his emotions on the easel of her back;

perfectly formed around her shoulder blades are poems of fire from his heart's written desire.

Your fingers are perfect studies of da Vinci;

tiny and innocent, unique in their caress of mine own.

Your hands, as they find themselves in my palms, relax.

Breathe steadily, and I can feel your pulse under your wrist.

V

The Shoulder blades

A remarkable feature of the torso are the shoulder blades;

two beautiful plates, that, when I place my hand just slightly beneath,

I can feel your heart beating, as my heart responds.

And to even contain my happiness, my smile, is impossible.

For you are you.

And I am further filled to the brim with joy at your reaction to my levity, your beauty.

VI

The Back

(hunched over)

While the spine is a radio tower transmitting personal electricity,

the back is another story.

Hunched, does it radiate with the dismality of the let down,

framed by a skeletal gown

of ribs.

Sulking reveals:

the spot where the head meets the neck,

the spot where dreams are regurgitated

the spot where Man is most innocent.

The back be not shaped of clay,

for it would melt with passions,

melt with the joys of love

first experienced by one child.

But the back be not shaped of glass, either,

for the constant sulking of

consistent disappointments

would break one child.

Instead, the back be shaped of raw metals.

Fresh from the fires of birth,

does it take twenty years to cool? To Harden?

Does it take twenty years to become cold to the world?

Does it take twenty years to lose ones childhood?

VII

The Back

(erect)

Pert and alert. She sits on the edge of the bed.

Her metal has cooled, and her back is taught, straight and bare.

Topless she gets up and pours a glass of milk, returning to sit on the edge of the bed,

an alien.

A stiff back is unhappy. It has hardened, no longer malleable by the same lies I have mistakenly repeated.

A stiff back has little to say.

Although given the chance, I would say to it,

"I am not sorry we loved,

I am not sorry it is over,

nor am I sorry there is nothing left to say."

A stiff back echoes words.

Rigid, she gets puts a camisole on and leaves the room to do something more important than address

the white elephant in the room, me.

My back, stiff too, from a poor night of sleep, slowly fills with the pain and soreness of anger at my ignorance.

The next night she lies comfortably on her back, another's fingers caress it and know it's secrets.

The birth mark beneath her shoulder.

The scare above her buttocks.

The place where her hair falls on her back is special, once mine.

That night I lay on my stomach, and cannot sleep.

VIII+

(More to come eventually)

Trinkets

Another poem from quiet a while ago, I remember I was playing the part of the Paper boy in A Streetcar Named Desire when I wrote this, I think I was backstage when I wrote it, too.

            I always thought of

The being of love

As some kind of peculiar trinket:

            An heirloom ring, a collection of fortune cookie fortunes,

                        a necklace or a precious gem, or a fine watch,

                                    a vinyl said to be fantastic.

Or perhaps an amateur oil painting

with an indistinguishable signature in the bottom left.

                                                Maybe, even, it is a rare book;

                                                Leather bound with Gold trim.

            However so the matter,

            a love interest must adversely be a professional appraiser,

            a true dealer and respecter in the ware of one’s heart,

who recognizes the malleability, and imperfections,

  of such pawn-able goods as love may be.

Peculiar.