PfS Rises Again

Here we go. Day one of college, and I've decided to resurrect this puppy. Leave comments, as always, even though you never do. Without ado:

Beginning to Live in the House of Sleep

There is a space between the shimmering plane
Of gridded bones
And the deadened wall
Of severed fibers
Where our breath, silent mist, seeps and curls to a cloned and bright facade
Where identical slabs and identical doors
Barricade our fellows -
Our fellows!

This army of strangers,
These sneering eyes,
They claim our own and fell? How can they
Beside their shapes
Attempt to know and spell
Our histories, our fortunes,
Our lusts and longs and nears?
And yet we must instruct them, while we ourselves our taught
Not of spheres and paths and books of slang
But of the families of familiars that our shells have wrought.

And our misty breath mingles, amidst a hall of statues,
Each of the same form, and yet
Of different shapes entirely.

Ben Finkel
September 29th, 2007

20s at Ransom and Erev Tamid

Eventually, this will resume again. In the meantime, something from mid-June that I just dug up, and a poem from last Purim, when I saw the most beautiful sunset.

20s at Ransom

Trapped in glass
words of masters
scream in dignity
Battling a stillborn brawl.
an old war of the present
citing and projecting.
The field is silent and vibrant
near and ancient
new and alien.
Which holds us?
Where have we taken
each other this round?
Everything depends - my lands in order.
______

Erev Tamid

The clouds have lost their luster
But after a moment's metamorphose,
Transform into sleek ravens, black
And violet against the darkened azure,
Whither the brazened and ambered moon ascends.

Dissected, a whole, a crescent against
The dying irridescence of spectrum
The rising majesty of umber
And rises and pearls, wrapping itself
In the olive memory of banded murk,
Remembering
The shadow
Of Earth
Written in darkness.

Erev Shalosh-Esrei b'Adar
Ben Finkel, March 3 2007