Yartzeit for John
A generation of hearts
Died with you November 22, 1963.
All these years have passed
I close my eyes
I hear the radio playing
In the Phoenix College cafeteria
Two thousand students eating lunch
Deathly silence, only hushed weeping
Walter Cronkite barely whispering
Incredulous “The President is dead…”
I don’t remember the rest
Maybe if I keep breathing the tears will stop
Maybe if I keep moving my feet
I will find my way through the parking lot
I will find my car, find my way home.
Where is my car?
Where is my home?
What has happened to my world of hope,
Of possibilities?
What has happened to my joyous country?
The generation who believed…
Believed that we could make a difference
Had our dreams, our lives, our hopes shattered
Buried along with you in Arlington
And nothing much has seemed familiar
Since the world stopped spinning in 1963.
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
I Saw a Mountain
I Saw a Mountain
© by Moses Schulstein
I saw a mountain
Higher than Mt. Blanc
And more Holy than the Mountain of Sinai.
Not in a dream. It was real.
On this world this mountain stood.
Such a mountain I saw–of Jewish shoes in Majdanek.
Such a mountain–such a mountain I saw.
And suddenly, a strange thing happened.
The mountain moved….
And the thousands of shoes arranged themselves
By size–by pairs—and in rows–and moved.
Hear! Hear the march.
Hear the shuffle of shoes left behind—that which remained.
From small, from large, from each and every one.
Make way for the rows–for the pairs,
For the generations–for the years.
The shoe army–it moves and moves.
“We are the shoes , we are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers.
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam.
And because we are only made of stuff and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.
We shoes–that used to go strolling in the market
Or with the bride and groom to the chuppah,
We shoes from simple Jews, from butchers and carpenters,
From crocheted booties of babies just beginning to walk and go
On happy occasions, weddings, and even until the time
Of giving birth, to a dance, to exciting places to life…
Or quietly–to a funeral.
Unceasingly we go. We tramp.
The hangman never had the chance to snatch us into his
Sack of loot–now we go to him.
Let everyone hear the steps, which flow as tears,
The steps that measure out the judgment.”
I saw a mountain
Higher than Mt. Blanc
And more Holy than the Mountain of Sinai.
Shades of Blue
Remembering shades of blue is learning to speak the truth and writing in a universal language. As I often felt my singular biggest problem has been – being misunderstood. I get furious because I assume that other people know what I mean when I say something and they don’t. Then I conjure up they are intentionally giving me a hard time because it’s much more enjoyable to be difficult than to attempt to understand what I’m saying. In other words, they’re giving me a hard time on purpose.
Heaven forbid that I might be communicating in a manner that is frustrating to them or they really do not know what I mean. Or that I’m doing my usual going in eighteen verbal directions at once, always knowing where I am, but seeing in their eyes that they are lost. How can my family members not know, when I’m perfectly clear and intelligent? Huh? After all they’ve know me forever, right?
It’s Saturday morning in Long Beach where you can find me painting yet another wall in my dinning room of the 1932 California bungalow house I love with the red oak floors and fifty year old rose bushes. I’m a nester and have been since I became an adult. All those early childhood years in a refugee camp took there toll on me. Having a special home to live in is about the most important thing on this earth to me.
I love painting, arranging, decorating, and have only recently given up hanging wallpaper. Mostly because I could have taken an African Safari or a trip to Paris for what I spent in the Laura Ashley store at South Coast Plaza for twelve years.
It’s the mid-eighties and once again I am revising the color of the dining room. What with Josh’s Bar Mitzvah taking place at the end of summer, the dining room with wanes coating dividing every wall that used to be duck egg blue with two tone striped wallpaper, will become the hot new style Country French in Wedgwood blue. Everybody is coming to the Bar Mitzvah and I want to show off my beautiful house, changing my mind yet again from two tone stripes to two toned flowers.
Personally, I was the profit margin for Laura Ashley, Ralph Lauren, and Home Depot. Their stock dropped considerably when I left Los Angeles in 1992. Saturdays were spent painting and Sunday mornings were spent at Home Depot finding a new project for the following week. If not for me these stores would go bankrupt for sure. Look at that, I’m helping the American economy all by myself. I am a heroine. An exhausted one as I work full time driving an hour each way to and from work on the LA freeways, but a heroine nevertheless.
“What are you doing,” the voice asks as I pick up the receiver Saturday morning?
“Hi Moishe, I’m painting the dining room.”
“Again,” my brother says incredulous. “What color are you painting it this time?”
“Wedgwood,” I respond.
“What, what the hell color is that,” questions Moishe getting ready to be miffed?
“You know, Wedgwood, the color of the plates.”
“What plates?”
“Wedgwood plates, the ones made in England.”
“Well what color is that,” says Moishe, seriously beginning to lose his patience with my obviously moronic behavior. Obvious to everyone but me.
“Well, it’s a kind of blue-ish gray. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, you know Wedgwood,” shocked that he does not fathom what I mean.
By this point the brother who called to ask me to breakfast would like to put his hands around my throat and squeeze. We do a little more “who’s on first” and I finally say, “It’s a shade of blue!”
“Why didn’t you say so in the beginning,” says Moishe shouting ?
“Because there are 5000 shades of blue,” say I even louder.
“You’re breaking my ear drum, why are you always screaming at me?” says Moishe.
And there is the rub, the dichotomy, the yo-yo. We’re smart, we’re clear. We understand how these 26 letters combine and twist and turn and what they mean. Why we’ve been using them our entire lives. We certainly know what we mean! Don’t we? How can the person standing next to or in front of or on the phone not get it? We even spend thousands of dollars, time and effort going to therapists whining about how we’ve been wronged using even more words, with more meanings.
So the conversation continues for at least thirty minutes with each of us batting the badminton back and forth across the airwaves for one to whack back to the other with each return louder than the other. All that lost energy and time discussing shades of blue when we could have been eating eggs benedict.
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
The Little Prince teaches “words are the source of all misunderstandings.”
Madagascar
Forty-three feelings of the day arrive
Or fifty-two
In this place in my middle
below my left ventricle
behind, a little to the right,
above my navel
pressed up against my spine.
A place where I know
Antananarivo at Sunset by Steve Evans
just know…
That self pity destroys the perpetrator
Complaining falls on deaf ears, and
Hurting is a contagious disease
you catch yourself
For which…
only you have the vaccine.
As I microscope my evaporating life
that left in a heartbeat
I know that I did not plan,
At least not knowingly,
Much of what happened to me
Yet, I know I did.
While pretending that
I do not have the answers
Refusing to unlock the door to let them in…
And Madagascar is an island
Off the Eastern coast of Africa,
And I can find my way there
Any time I please.
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
*For Dr. Martin Bravin, a professor, teacher, and friend who passed on. He used to play a game with his students. “Want to change your life? You have three minutes from the time I start the stop watch. One, two, three. What is the capital of Madagascar?” he asked clicking the start button on the watch. “How you play the game is how you run your life.” He also had me read the Estachological Laundry List.
Seattle On Sunday
Are you ever going to see
Or even get to read
All these letters I write to you
On Sunday mornings,
Early…
Before the sun comes out of hiding?
When we should be sharing our bodies
warm and wanting.
S…T…R…E…T…C…H…I…N…G
Like lazy cats on summer days.
All these feelings spilling out on paper
instead of on to you.
Sitting here…
…alone.
Drinking coffee
staring at a gray sky.
Dreaming thoughts of you and me
Sharing our bodies, early
On Sunday mornings
Warm and wanting
hungry…
so hungry…
With thoughts and feelings of you.
Wall of Words
We build our walls
Of bricks and stone
Of words and looks
High and wide
Piece by broken piece
Hurt by wounded hurt
Bridge by burned bridge.
Berlin Wall
Then we wait…
We feed, then water our hurts
Our broken dreams
Our bulbs of expectations
That never bloom
Without communication.
Without meaning what we say
Or saying what we mean.
Not acknowledging what we keep
Or knowing what to throw away.
We nurture these wounds
Like baby birds with broken wings
Tied to a nest unable to fly
Forced to stay
Behind too long.
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
Someday in Paris
You seduce with the body of a man
who’d ask a woman to lunch in Paris
Someday…
when he could afford the first class fare
Denny’s around the corner will have to do for now
And though I’ve known passion with men of experience
More than once…
Talented older and wiser men
Surely, they were incapable of lighting my heart
Not as you, with your laughing eyes
Which tickle at daybreak
In my office, with the door closed, and our clothes on…
I can’t remember the last time I wished for a younger body
Believed a truce had been made with the one I inhabit
Yet…
I find myself longing for dreams at 3 am
The daylight dance again and again
Wishing you were fifty and seven
instead of twenty and nine
Yearning for me, like you did yesterday
With those amused lake brushed eyes, not knowing yet
How to approach me or where to begin
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
Raison D’être
Little lies that keep adding up
The power trips he takes
At my expense
Advantages without my knowledge
Acknowledgment
Without my consent.
Advantages…
that wrap themselves together tightly
tied like bundles of newspapers
for recycling that comes
Wednesdays with the big green truck
the dogs bark at.
Unconscious, unaware, uninformed
Intentionally blind not wanting to know
Too afraid to comprehend
Paralysis setting in
Advantages I toss away…
Without payment, without please,
Without permission, without thanks
placed in my subconscious daily
like on a shelf
stacked one upon the other
To be remembered and understood when I am older
when I have time for contemplation…
The divide begins……..then grows wider
The void becomes a chasm
Too wide to be traversed.
The switch moves up, the light comes on
The pills get tossed
I pick up my son
and walk out of his Father’s life for good.
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
Subconscious
Last night
You touched me tenderly
During sleep so sound
Only the body remembers
Subconscious whispers
of the soul…
All rights reserved. ©2009 by Sara Fryd
Far Away Friends
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