One Dream Is Not Enough

 Our first meeting was like a dream,
A perfect but impossible encounter
Beneath fluorescent lights
 
But one dream is not enough
For an entire lifetime, and so
I’ve dreamed of nothing else ever since
 
Asleep I dream of days spent together,
Of laughter and music and the smells
Of a welcoming kitchen
 
Awake I dream of sleeping in your arms
And the sweetness of your kiss
And hiding in your tangled hair
 
Before, my life was only cold reality,
But now it is a warm and loving dream
From which I know I’ll never wake.

Review: Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, Lily Poetry Review Books

Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, from Lily Poetry Review Books

 

In her newest collection of poems (Story & Bone, Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022), Deborah Leipziger explores all the ways in which she intersects with her world, and thus helps us all understand the ways in which we intersect with our own. She reveals herself as daughter, mother, lover, friend; as baker, gardener, poet; as Brazilian, American, Jew; but most of all as human.

            Skillfully reusing phrases and images from one poem to the next, so that one page seems to echo the ones before, Leipziger reminds us of the rhythms and patterns in every life. The most notable example of this is when she speaks of her family’s story of ancestors concealing valuables as they escaped from tyranny: in one poem, “gems into the hems”; in another “gems sewn in hems”; in a third: “gems faceted by stone hidden in garments”. She then calls the very story into question: “Or is it legend / I sing the fiction and non-fiction”. 

            Or again with multiple references to her own dangerous birth:  “I celebrate my survival / from the umbilical cord / wrapped around my neck”; and then, “the umbilical cord coiled around my neck”. She then multiplies the echo through the umbilical connection between herself and her twin daughters…and further by drawing the comparison between her own blue complexion at birth and the color of the walls in the room where she gives birth. Echoes upon echoes.

            There is an almost breathtaking sense of intimacy in this work, a fearless willingness to share herself with the reader, body and soul, as in:

 

            “I celebrate my nimbus of curls

            nipples   neck   navel”

 

            “I open myself and claim my

            openness

            I transform and sing

            my Evolution”

 

            “I enter with offerings –

            Pomegranates and honey dates,

            All that I will be is here.

            Entering.”

 

There is an earth-mother-like quality in the way she shows us a day of making lemonade with her daughters (Lemonade), or compares the act of picking apples in an orchard to that of motherhood itself (Apple Orchard), or when she provides the most spiritual and open-hearted recipe I’ve ever seen anywhere (How to Make a Challah).

            Every page seems to glimmer with its own light, but for me the most sublimely luminescent moment comes in How to Help a Friend Mourn, which opens “For this you will need lemons” and then explains: 

            “Maybe you won’t have time to grow a lemon tree

but you have planned for this moment,

this is why you’ve grown a lemon tree.”

  

As in her earlier work, there are many floral images here, and when she puts the phrase “A half truth / to say I painted flowers” into Georgia O’Keefe’s mouth it’s clear she’s speaking of her own poetry as well. Sometimes a calyx or a spadix are more than the parts of a flower.

All artists strive to make their audience feel something. Leipziger succeeds triumphantly. You will feel her warmth and her wisdom; her strength and her vulnerability; her love of life and her deep understanding of both its pain and its beauty. This is a truly lovely book.

A Tiger in Her Hips

Let me tell you man she’s got a tiger in her hips,

She’s got fire in her fingertips,

And I can’t wait to kiss her lips again.

She’s devoured by her desire to devour me,

As I her, every time I see

The sparkle in her sea green eyes.

And when we are united in the burning fire

Of our love, consumed by our desire,

We feel no fear as we soar ever higher, never

Dreaming of landing, ever clinging tightly

To each other and knowing, rightly,

That we’ll find each other nightly, evermore.

Another Poem About the Moon

Another poem about the moon
Another song about what you mean to me
I have so much I need to say
About the moon and you and me
 
You and the moon and me
Side by side by side
Just the way it pulls the sea
Creating the rising and falling tide
It pulls on you and it pulls on me
Until we’re side by side by side
 
Another verse about the stars
The ones that hang in the midnight sky
And the ones I see shining
There in your eyes
 
You and the stars are my guiding lights
Hanging in the sky or hanging from your ears
Keep me on my path, day and night
I see you both always, far or near
Shining with a pure silver light
And I feel no fear
 
Just another song of you
Or another part of the same sweet song
I’ve sung since our love was new
And still my heart beats strong
And still my heart stays true
And still I sing the same sweet song
Of me and the moon and you

Eternity must be jealous of the present

Eternity must be jealous of the present, 
its immediacy, its relevance.
Yes, eternity must be jealous 
when a lover smiles and sighs, 
when she removes the clip 
which had held back her hair, 
freeing it and allowing me 
to slip my hand between the strands 
as if it were a bolt of priceless silk 
which she offers to me 
as a queen might offer 
alms to a beggar.
My fingers luxuriate gratefully. 
This gratitude and luxury 
exist only in the present, 
and so, eternity is jealous.

Eternity is full of 
inconsequentialities 
and coincidences.
Full of happenstances 
and miscellaneous occurrences.
But only the present contains life.
Only the present contains love.
Only the present contains potentiality and value.
Only the present contains her sweet kiss.
And so, eternity is jealous.

Unmindfulness

 Unmindfulness
 
turn down the volume on Ego, turn it down to “1”
what remains will rise, float, free of time,
free of gravity, free of greed and desire
floating on whatever current it encounters
    undirected
    untethered
    unmindful
bumping against whatever obstacles there may be
    unhindered
    uncontrolled
    unmindful
a conscious dream-state
an exploration of the unknown, unknowable,
uncountable selves which you contain
(for, as Whitman, you contain multitudes)
 
an intentional day-dreaming journey toward
that which is hidden
that which you will never find
that which feeds your ego-driven, day-to-day
existence as decaying compost feeds your garden
 
find without seeking, discover without searching
 
    unmindful
 
Bring me back a poem

Not 'Why', But 'How'

 For millennia we’ve been asking the wrong question.
“Why are we here?” is as interesting and relevant
as “what’s your star sign?”.
There is no “why”, there is only IS.
We were not sent here on a mission,
or with a purpose or a function.
There is no celestial Headmaster
handing down life lessons to be studied.
There is no final exam to be passed or failed.
There is no spiritual scorecard to be reviewed when we die.
And there is no eternal reward or punishment awaiting.
 
We simply live,
in this world,
alongside all the other
people and animals and plants.
 
The question is not “why?”, but “how?”.
How best to live a life,
how best to carry on,
How best to simply BE in the world?

The Gospel According to Aloysius Jones

The Gospel According to Aloysius Jones
 
Jesus never walked on water
I should know, I saw, I was there
Jesus never walked on water
And he didn’t have straight brown hair
 
My name is Aloysius Jones
Just another bag of bones
But I was there, I saw it all
I saw the rise, I saw the fall
 
He only wanted what we all want
Someone to listen, someone to hold
Someone to light a fire when
The nights are long and cold
 
Some say he was a great man
Some say much more than that
Still, they killed him in the end
Don’t we treat all heroes like that
 
My name is Aloysius Jones
Just another bag of bones
But I was there, I saw it all
I saw the rise, I saw the fall
 
Did he rise from the dead
Or did his carcass rot to ash and dust
There’s only one rule in this world
If you live, then die you must
 
My name is Aloysius Jones
Just another bag of bones
But I was there, I saw it all
I saw the rise, I saw the fall

Also The Darkness

You told me today
that your favorite kind of clouds
are the ones that are big and fluffy
and mostly white
but with a darker grey around the edge.
I think I know why.
For I am drawn to your light,
to your eyes aglow,
and your luminous smile,
to the shower of sparks every time you laugh,
the radiance of your deep brown hair,
and the bonfire in my soul when you touch me.
But also, I am drawn to the darkness
which lurks beneath the surface,
and which you try to hide behind the ocean of your eyes,
but which I see as clearly as if
it was written in black headlines on a white page.
As in nature, so in each heart,
there can be no light without darkness.
And so, I am the moth drawn to the flame
of the joy you can’t help but radiate,
just as I am the comforting arms
compelled to embrace the pain you hide
from everyone but me.

May We Dance

As graceless as mannequins in formal attire,
Not knowing for whom we dress,
We rise formless as smoke to impossible heights,
Entangled in each other’s mess.
 
One dances a rhumba, another a waltz,
Solo, or with partner in hand.
Some spin ‘cross the floor in shoes full of holes,
On scattered handfuls of sand.
I dance on this page since my feet don’t know how.
But we all dance to the tune of an unseen band.
 
May we dance until the final note
May we dance until the end
May we dance until the lights go out
May I dance with you, my friend

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