Category Archives: POETRY BY COACH IRIS

Red Poppies Returning

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by Iris Arenson-Fuller

Everything comes back
in one way or another.
It might boomerang, smacking us
in the ass when we stand outside
watching kamikaze birds
hit the kitchen window
with the blue tulip designs.
It might be taunting thoughts
that revisit in the night,
thick like caramel topping,
making our minds too sticky to sleep.

Yesterday was no different.
one red poppy showed a shy face
in front of the white house.
soon more will stretch themselves awake
to join their lone sunbathing friend.
they remind me of the poppy reserve in Lancaster
where we took my sister for a ride.
she sat in the car, almost shriveling up
before our unbelieving eyes
while the fields of endless poppies
waved to us in the feeble desert breeze.

Years ago our yard poppies disappeared.
the big maple cut off their lifeline,
banished the sun that made it worth growing.
but the maple was cut down, sick with age.
all living things complete their life cycle
departing to an unknown space,
suspended in our memories like a hammock
swinging back and forth between what lulls us
so softly into pleasurable sleep,
and what jolts us wide awake,
making dreams come to life, making limbs shake.

My poppies will flourish
when I am airborne like dandelion seeds,
when thoughts of me may make it hard
for you to open curtains and let in fresh air.
poppies have their own reasons,
their own dna, unstoppable by my tears.
they do not mark rows of graves.
only I mark them now, counting silently;
Those same larks that flew over war-dead
form sky patterns now, singing this time
to drown out sorrows, not guns,
to remind us to look up and wait
for a new dawn.

Remembering Sr. Mary Holy Cart and Pondering Jewish Roots

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New Poem- By Iris Arenson-Fuller

Long ago, Mary Grace and I,
New England transplants from Brooklyn,
bought an ugly needlepoint picture for $1
at someone’s yard sale.
We dubbed her Sr. Mary Holycart,
ungentle blue nun’s eyes, under old-style habit.

 
Irish guilt won the wrestling match 
so Jewish guilt, the loser in that game,
got to take Sr. Mary home to live in a corner,
forgotten by all but dust and cobwebs.
Who knows what happened to her?
Maybe tossed with old toys,
chipped cups, jeans embroidered with flowers,
crumbled friendships that grew stale as we aged,
adult consciousness that crept in unannounced,
deciding she might offend a visitor who spotted her.

II

 I think Jews are a little like Marines,
or I am , anyway.
You know, “Semper Fi”
no matter how we have roamed
spiritual paths paved with unfamiliar stones,
exotic flowers poking out between the cracks.
We plucked wild blossoms
as we journeyed the decades,
far away from Brooklyn roots,
away from chicken soup with matzoh balls.

No matter that we embraced more than men
who never wore skullcaps and prayer shawls,
who ate bacon, licked their fingers
with joyful waspish abandon,
renounced their own churches,
who loved the tales of Shalom Aleichem,
spewed Yiddish phrases like tender love songs
that we remembered just long enough
to teach, then packed them all up
in pickle barrels of dusty, distant memories.

 We never imagined one day wanting
to unearth these, lovingly uncovering
each one, holding it to our hearts,
like the memories of Passover dishes
unwrapped once a year, the glass ones,
along with the dog and cat
plastic salt and pepper shakers,
the white enamel pail for storing
hard boiled eggs and potatoes, Passover snacks,
the pan we used for making fried matzohs
while our neighbors put on Easter bonnets.

 III

My brother-in-law, dying of brain cancer,
might smoke a turd in two hells but I don’t think there is a hell
in the books of my forefathers.
Baptized Catholic, later a Bar Mitzvah Boy,
(shhh, it’s a big secret)
now as passive as his sweet, insecure mother,
who swayed like bamboo in winds of conflict,
bowing to dictates of others, mostly men in her life.
He wants to speak to a rabbi, but settles
for the priest his wife corrals in the hospital hallway,
and he even wears a crucifix for weeks.

 We don’t know what he is thinking, fearing,
have no knowledge yet of how it feels
when threads of death wind tightly around you,
pulling you closer and away from living.
We don’t know what dreams swell up
next to the cancer and play back
murky pictures, whether he wants
to see them or not.
We don’t know if the visions are soft promises,
pastoral paintings, or more like wild highjacking
of the senses after ingesting peyote mushrooms,
dreams of colors, or of shadows and ogres.

We do know he has asked three times for a rabbi,
perhaps a messenger from his grandmother’s world,
papered with rules and singsong lessons learned as a boy.
He thought this world had been painted over,
but it slowly peels itself off the surface of his days
in brittle strips, landing on couch or wing chair
piled high with stacks of books and hats.
The grand piano we never heard played,
the cello, violin, the apartment crammed
with remnants of a life saved for someday,
all watch, asking questions and answering
with more questions, like ancient Jewish scholars.

Remembering Thumbs and Other Parts

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Hi to my regular readers and to any new ones.  I know I haven’t been putting up new posts for a while. So much has been going on personally and professionally. I promise to get some things up for you soon.

Meanwhile, this is a poem I have been working on for a while. I recorded it on Sound Cloud and shared it on Facebook but here it is in print. I would appreciate your sending it on to others who might enjoy it.

If you haven’t heard it through the post on Facebook, here is the Sound Cloud link:

http://soundcloud.com/irisarenson-fuller/audio-recording-on-tuesday

Remembering Thumbs and Other Parts

                                             Iris Arenson-Fuller-Nov 2011

We danced in the kitchen
on the linoleum you could eat from
if all the dishes were dirty
(though we knew that would never happen
in my  mother’s house).

My father let me stand on his shoes,
held my hands tightly till I felt the blood
squeezing up through my arms, past the neck,
oozing out my elf ears like Crest toothpaste
forced from the tube.

We waltzed and laughed,
his extra thumb an anchor as I gripped it,
thinking all dads had one,
steadying myself from waves
of dizziness, seasick from twirling,
after big bowls of  spumoni from Sal’s store
on the corner..

While we waltzed, we listened to
the mixmaster churning, finally freed
of the plastic cover she dressed it in.
the oven slowly worked its way up
to meet requirements, ready to greet
trays of perfect white circles,
rolled into balls, flattened, kissed
with jelly thumbprints by my mother’s
two loving hands, diamond rings off,
sitting on the speckled counter.

I got a gift around that time,
a book about K’tonton, Jewish Tom Thumb,
mischief-maker extraordinaire, like me.
I climbed in and out of his pages,
hung upside down by my own thumbs
from the rim of a wooden  mixing bowl,.
never once scolded for the flour I scattered
to the winds when I happily swam in the batter.

It took me years to look up and notice
the things that others saw.
my fat little thumbprints were
dancing on the kitchen window
smudging my visual highway
to the life stationed outside awaiting me,
a windy, cold world I never ran through
without furry white coat, matching
hat, gloves and fancy purse bought with
my big sister’s first paychecks..

Sometimes my father’s extra thumb
tapped tensely on the formica kitchen table,
he frowned into the black phone balanced on his shoulder
while my brother shouted at him across town
where he lived with his wife and kids.

I covered my ears, till the voices softened,
fought off the twitches I hated,
yet that  kept me snug and safe,
took me far away from scary songs
of self-blame nobody else ever heard,
went back to my books and waltzing.

Years later, they put my brother’s leg on display,
a hospital peep show through a small window
in the hyperbaric chamber.
they all cringed  but  I looked in.
when they severed the leg, tossed it on a pile
in leg limbo, my brother took his first wooden steps,
eyes frozen on my father’s face, no more shouting,
but no more waltzing for either one.

My brother’s eyes were tired the last night I saw him.
standing together, we caught a quiet moment,
cradling it,  a firefly captured in the dark.
he was the sick one, he told me–that was that,.
no discussion, so my kidney stayed safely tucked inside,
as his body parts continued failing and falling,
collapsing organ dominoes.

I was grown then, my two eldest with sweet fat cheeks,
the blonde one and his suck-a-thumb sister,
her neat cornrows perpetually housing sand
from pre-school playtime,
they stayed up past bedtime, thumbing through Oz books,
thumbing their small noses at grown up rules,
they thumb-wrestled with their strong father in the days
before MS claimed  his body parts as ransom.

I begged the wind to blow our inside-out umbrella-world
back in place, to send bad luck swirling over trees
to raise leafless branches high, twig-thumbs up
in praise of whatever gods  could wrap the pieces
of our shattered lives in cotton wool, carry them home
in the sweet silence of dawn, glue them together, make them work,
the cut up parts and limbs, real and artificial,
the crutches, borrowed kidney, defective hearts
that seemed to stop time for us.

.My begging though, was like watching a hitchhiker
thumbing a ride on a dark country road
where few cars passed and those that did
spat rejection as they kicked up stones and dust.
I can also see the girl, braids flying and the woman,
with the heart that goes wild with no warning,
yet finds its own mini- rhythm and beats on,
a ruddy structure with invisible holes,
a tiny instrument in a symphony on auto-play,
making music even when she believes
there is only death.

.

Finding the Shut-Off Valve In a New Year

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When life is hard, but we must still manage to live it….

 

http://www.flood-pictures.com/wp-content/gallery/flood-pictures-2/cover-me-said

Lately, the floodwaters have been rising
wherever I turn
the river, hyperactive, vaulting off its own banks,
a frenzied performance of break-dancing
that leaves me in awe but afraid

This is not the river I thought I knew
that once carried duck clans and lillies
on its modest back, rocked them to sleep
with tender ripples now transformed, 
declaring war on all that lies in the path of boldness

In the silence when creatures creep sneakily,
i am lulled into half-sleep, pretending serenity
in truth my mind’s eye is a tense sentinel
awaiting the fury of floods from the past, 
memories of the dead ones and mistakes
that fly by to squeeze my heart till nothing flows

These memories bear me no ill will
 in fact I pray to them at times,
their trust proven over years of trials and tears
they have not abandoned me wilfully
but I often feel boarded up and empty

If a talisman, a gaudy religious trinket
would help to plug a small hole in a life
that spurts out things to make me shiver,
things that shout playground taunts
drowning out the rational brain,
I would buy a truckload.

I  force myself to live in a present
 never wrapped in splendid paper
I try hard  to keep a small finger in the wall,
so the floods are somewhat tamed
while I do my best tending
to bread and butter business.

I am tethered, though, my range of motion small
adhesions thickly formed to prevent me
from moving too far from the plugged up place
even much-craved half-sleep is full of worry
working its way into creaky joints the gym and I trick
the mind into forgetting.

Somehow, in the New Year, I will find a way
to dip apples in honey, to clear wax from my ears
so I can hear the hundred notes of the ram’s horn
and when it is time to empty pockets, cast off sins
I will remove the finger and let the waters flow,
eyes squeezed shut, hoping I won’t be carried away.

Guest Post By Jesse Abbot

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This post is the exclusive property of Jesse I. Abbot and may not be copied or reproduced. It is posted here with the permission of the author. More of his work can be found at http://www.jesseabbot.com

from the book of common care – sometimes darkness mates with light

Aug 31, 2011

We all clamor for light instead of darkness.  .  .except when we want to catch some sleep, and we draw the curtains or blinds. Most often, though, we bend toward light as a sunflower does – as many creatures on the earth do.

Yet sometimes there is intermittent light and darkness; sometimes darkness mates with light. We cannot stop this coupling, and so we must keep vigil in order to receive the light when it does come our way. We can use the darkness to sleep ’til we are refreshed, but we must not assume that illumination will not come amid our nights.

Of course I am using metaphors, but whether I am speaking of spiritual darkness or literal night, the images persist, and we can find our way with them. Sometimes we look for a flashlight or our eyeglasses in the dark – and literally all we need to locate them are a flashlight or glasses! In other words, sometimes there is no immediate path through this flashing on and off of light, and we need to contend with paradox. We cannot lord over the progression of darkness and light and darkness again; we cannot have dominion over what emerges in our worlds.

Of course there is prayer, and that carries its own flame or light. Prayer can help us navigate through what we cannot control, and know that goodness does not always come in happy moments; goodness and holiness are color blind and light-and-dark-blind. I pray that you may find your hope and goodness in all kinds of weather, and in all gradations of light and darkness. I pray that sometimes in the moonlight, you may see a reflection of the sun, and know that the deepest Sunday or Inner Sabbath is near.

Prying Open the Bud

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Prying Open the Bud

                 -Iris Arenson-Fuller

“And the day came that the pain it took to remain tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin

when we feel the waves crashing against the windows
despite living in a land-locked town
sand grits up the mind, waves whisper secrets
not heard by others, growing louder in the head

     it’s time to bolt from rooms
    that engulf us in smoky dark
    time to blink into the sun that warms
    earthworms, budding flowers
    and tortured souls alike

time to do it when limbs are just long, pale pouches
with pounds of pebbles sewn inside, weighing us down
when our cell nuclei, not our ears
hear the haunting music
of the evil snake charmer
who tells us there is no hope

    time when we want to run from the high-def
    big screen picture,
    our personal horror show
    turning on relentlessly as we try to relax
     into tiny moments that let us breathe

If we don’t force ourselves to exit and find the light
our children will be orphans, forever dreaming
of unfulfilled promises that sit in a box upstairs,
memories fading fast, lemon juice ink on paper

    we must seek elusive brightness under the veil
    must push ourselves out with the contractions, not resist.
    true the soul feels fragile, unreal,
    but is as real as your foot,
    part of God’s essence, impossible to kill

who will keep repeating to us that all is temporary?
those who love us and fear we won’t listen?
the face in the mirror that knows the truth
but shrinks from it out of fear and guilt?

     some guru, merely as human as we are,
     though we resist our own humanity, fight the wind
     with an inside-out umbrella, then just give up?

we sometimes learn too late that punishment
meted out by demons we create is far more ugly
than any real demons hiding under rocks
those who believe in the Next World of Truth will tell you
even there, only the most truly wicked make eternal payment

     the average bear gets a ticket
     to watch his life play back
     to feel the pain of squandered potential
    keeping him from Oneness
    but only till the lessons sink in
    and his spirit is freed

it’s time to bolt, urging unwilling limbs to move,
reluctant brains to unstick the needle caught in the groove

     time to blink into the sun that still warms
    earthworms, budding flowers
    and tortured souls alike
    if we force open those buds,
    risk living, thumb noses
   at those who would try to trap us
   into squandering our potential.
   we will see spring flowers blooming
    in dead of winter, I promise

BOMBS THAT DROP

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Bombs That Drop

Iris Arenson-Fuller, June 2011

(If you’re wondering why the photos don’t at first seem to fit the poem’s title, I invite you to read on!)

 

I have been both the bombardier and the debris
left standing after dropping of the bomb.

Sometimes life looks  like Joplin, sad victims pacing,
tears flowing through the streets making rivers.
You see bits of great aunt’s blue china floating
in runnels of tears, a monkey sock doll,
a dog’s dish, empty, beseeching the sky
for something to fill it, for a small creature
to come bounding and barking out of the rubble
at dinnertime.

I have been the one sitting under willows,
writing sad poems accompanied by bee music.

Life buzzed by taunting with singsong rhymes
on willow days when poems were born gasping for air
after birth, some never claiming rightful life
because I, too, was reluctant to claim it.

I sat hiding from the sun, dreaming fitfully
of a green, fertile past, long gone.

I used to search the land for targets to destroy
on orders from my brain, untrained in peace.
My normal was long days of constant guard-duty
stuck in a foxhole, muscles tense, watchful
for new heartaches threatening to crash,
no idea that I was the enemy, not life.
Joy was my hostage, carefully contained,
tightly bound.

A friend said yesterday, “Life just sucks,
but then gets better and then it sucks again”.

She isn’t wrong but now I know a little better
how to find the sweet spaces in-between,
where we sink in and marvel at the quiet.
I can sit watching the trumpet lilies, peaches, pinks,
spreading over the day, delicious marmalade,
and not be so afraid of what’s next.

When life looks like Joplin on the news
I admit I wait for the waters to rise.

I do my best to turn off shape-shifter dreams
that fast become nightmares where bombs explode,
though the horizon was peaceful moments ago.
It’s not easy but I prefer dreams that float in,
leaves gently stirred by breezes, a lover’s touch,
barely there, promising greater pleasures.