Poems by Ben Passikoff...


Welcome to
Ben Passikoff
73-07 164 St.
Flushing, NY 11366

ONLY IN DARKNESS IS THY SHADOW CLEAR



          "Open a synagogue inside your heart,"


          the rabbi said to nobody who listened,


          "Where you and God alone can pew


          in mutual robes concentric over old shoulders


          shivering ancient intonations


          inchanted whiskerly.  For God begins


          like little Moses in Egyptian lilies,


          homeless, and wanders with his tribe


          handing out yesterdays from rolling pushcart


          old with trudge, bent ruts and bitter history.




          Crossed and purpling like his other son,


          your eye-noise prays your only inch of time.


          Unskinned by pity, viscera in dance,


          amid a crouch of chasidim,


          he speaks to him who lives


          in the middle of minutes."




          Thus rabbi, single cylinder of Torah,


          his words roundtripping unhearing walls,


          splitting air only with the knife of sacrifice.

            RECOVERY ROOM



          Entering dimension,


          I copied the mirror.


          Most of me was there.



          Ether cold my toes.


          They brought me kindness in two cups,


          the white ladies.



          Scalpels had ceased


          their intimate singing,


          sirening my bones,



          internal lacery


          spraying


          posies of blood.



          Entirely Easter,


          I rose multiplied


          by the fix of myth,



          sainted all over


          like church glass.


          Vanilla innocent



          amid the urb,


          my heritage


          of shtetl chants,



          precise nose of knife


          inventing


          its own air

            TWO-PART INVENTION


          Reach me.

          You there, singing your clothes

          with the unstrung bow of your belly,

          reach me where we stand.

          I am so far

          innocent of your mouth,

          its red workings.


          Old is on me.

          The terrible ceiling darkens

          like a dying man's landscape.

          Listen to me

          between my words.

          Smell my eyes.

          Breathe me.


          Reach me.

          Pat the perfect curve

          of my doghead.

          Be my tuxedo-black cat,

          tail a flash,

          curling in the corner

          of my percussion.


          Say me your feel.

          I will chant your cold curls,

          the randomly attached

          grace notes of your head.


          Inflict me.

          Letter my skin.

          Brand me

          to the sudden bright bone.

          Be my wound.


          Reach me.



                                                        




                          


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