Oma and Opa (Version #2)

I never thought

I would have a hunched-back grandmother

She shuffles her feet

Moving slowly from worn-out carpeted room to the next

Still on the same green

My grandfather struggles

Taking care of two

Organizing the week’s pills and drugs

Dropping hot coffee from strokes

Not remembering

I get offered fake cream cheese

Its Jalapeno-flavored by mistake

I visit my grandparents

Once or twice a month

I should more

As I watch them die before my eyes

Slowly

Age into a cold fragile bony lifeless full of love

The smell of bad breath I can’t get away from

Because I admit to a certain warmth I have for them

They visited me every day

And I can’t commit to each weekend or each month

I can’t support and call her an ass and we don’t understand

She saw her sisters shot

He never saw his brother in Africa

Years of photographs bring tears and stains

The stained plastic Tupperware

stained of chicken-matzoh-ball-soup, lox, and tuna fish

I get fed and care packages to take home to my bachelor pad

They die and I eat

I can’t even commit to a god they want

My grandfather can’t walk

But never sheds a tear for his strength is what makes him stone

His eyebrows grow like wild bushes and firestorm feeding brush

His eyes after surgery old and aging his cheek permanent with an accent

Thick of Germany

His pacemaker beats

She wets

I don’t know when their last bath was

Or if she looks like wonderfully aged Chinese woman I once saw at the New Museum

No more cookies, no recipe, some thin mints and M&Ms

Old, falling apart, deteriorating, bucket of bones cold and white

Their plastic has covered that couch for years

I wonder when they will take it off?

When one dies?

To be more comfortable

To feel the fabric of that couch?

Not the plastic sticking to your arms and legs and thighs?

Is the plastic an insecurity?

We protect the home from which we live, but we never fully live?

Is it their god that makes them cry?

Or makes them strong?

Does he pray for his mother each evening?

Or does he now pray for his wife?

As he once did for me?

Opera singers scream throughout the apartment

Some live, some radio

Some next door

And the green plants flourish

Or die

Never once did I see a bug

Or bullet, only a sword and an award

My grandparents are dying

Before my eyes

I want to hold them

I want to save them

I want to wrap them up in gauze and make them Egyptian art

I want to get the recipe

I want to show them my dead deer, my 9INE, my cats, my fat

My grandfather has held my hand

He has witnessed me in pain

In horror

In the nude

In the realness of the most fake state imaginable

I must have gotten my bright blue eyes

And blonde hair from her

Her blue eyes

As intense as mine

She taught me the language of her god

He taught me the gift of life

Now if I can only find someone to give that gift to

I’d make them happy, if they followed their god

© 2000 David Greg Harth

99.12.24.23:13:12 @ 296

00.01.03.20:33:33 @ 296

One Week

On Sunday

I take you to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

We see van Gogh, Degas, and Turner

We get lost together in their masterpieces

Of strokes, dances and light

We surround ourselves in the art around us

To create our own

We explore each room while re-inventing ourselves

On Monday

After a candle-lit dinner

I take you to the Empire State Building

Right to the tippy-top

To view the world

Our New York City

That we conquered together

With shared secrets and passion

On the top in an embrace

We kiss to the stars above and the midnight lights below

On Tuesday

After the wine down your back

I cuddle you in my arms

As we shower together

Feeling silky wet

With suds pouring down

I wash the slippery inches of your body

From butt to thigh to breast to ear

On Wednesday

We skip work

To where the sun shines daily

And birds fly high

Where flowers bloom beneath

Central park is where we escape today

Frolic in the sun on the meadow

Being with you and exploring

Laying upon your lap, you in mine

Together we relax and wonder

On Thursday

The evening is ours

This night is full of sweetness

From the kisses on your lips to your navel

I lick the honey from your mouth and stomach

To strawberries of today

Following your precious eyes

I take the strawberry to every corner of your body

And nibble nibble tonight

On Friday

The warm day brought us to a gathering tight close

With ice in my hand

I glide down your body through your soul

Upon your every pore

From foot upwards on your leg and inner thigh

Above your pubic mound to your strong navel

Upward glance

Upon your breasts and now stiff nipples

Until the ice reaches your neck

The coldness giving you goosebumps all over

To your lips

Ice and now I kiss

And run my fingers through your hair

And down your back

On Saturday

Quiet with the actions

Too many to exist in our time

Ran around here and there

Shared an ice tea on the avenue

Remembering last night and the night before

Everlasting

I let the water fill up the tub

For you

I sprinkle flowers on the water’s edge and surface

Roses, daisies, tulips, sunflowers, carnations, daffodils, irises, lilies

And leaves of green

Cover your warm bath water

And now you can beautify the world

And take a hot bath in flowers

While I wash your back and your hair

And burn candles on the porcelain surroundings

Tonight

© 1999 David Greg Harth

99.04.10.03:27:38 @ 296 NYC

99.04.13.01:32:33 @ 296 NYC

One Way Out

No one allowed in

Not even barbed wire fetishists

Or concrete expansions

No sexy blue-eyes from the West

Not even loving brothers of art

Or inspirational rebels of Sunday

No flexible IV drugs

Not even spinal taps, SPECT scans, and MRIs

Or doctors from Pennsylvania

No pop artists

Not even previous grocery baggers

Or today’s best interest

No women from the womb

Not even from authors of Mars

Or Vietnam writers and golden makers

No papas from hills and trees

Not even superb bombers

Or home-made cookie makers

No more salty tears

Not even a trace and scent

Or a remainder of my existence.

© 1999 David Greg Harth

99.03.29.01:19:00 @ FLT#116

Oma and Opa

Intrepid trips and the mountains of the concord

Lake George and my first home cooked meal after Neuro

Drawings saved and cherished memories explored

Hanukkah mensch and false teeth

Jump with sister and battle ships and swords

Cardboard oats cars and super 8 lighting

Family of black elephants and looking at the field

Squirrel parks and peanut feeding

Cupped hands and locked doors

Green carpets and curved couches

Rockefeller Christmas and Empire State

Hugs kisses and the warmth I’ve never had

Fresh Chocolate Chip cookies, sprinkles too

Pineapple chicken and first night dinners

Videotaping U2 as I grow

Hershey’s chocolate milk and canned pears

The beach box fighting man

Never forget the Ten Dollar story left on a park bench

Museums and matchbox cars

Parades and snoopy

Dip of a chair, relax and lean back

Corned Beef deli sandwiches and a car driver

Not telling them what to do

Large flushing toilets

Opera singers and little David upstairs playing

Finding places, meeting people, aging with beauty

Mints and M&Ms if I dress right

Proud and pride that come from the heart

Poetry and perspective

Corners have light and the sisters were shot

Holocaust avoided, conquered, escaped, effected, affected

Past the surgeries, the pace, the cancer, the hearts, the loss

Sewing buttons and holes galore

Stories told and always shared, some hidden

Photographs explored, taken, remembered

Two short ones, one time I once shorter

Unconditional love - If I am so dare to say

© 1998 David Greg Harth

98.08.25.23:35:58@NJ

98.09.18.01:27:48@NJ

Ocean Space Is Where I Wait

Jesus or Moses

Seas and deserts

Among the rocks

Among the steam ships

Among the trains

And the radars that break barriers

Through the wires

Through the regions

We all bow

We all look up

Though even though I do not

Nor do he

I thank all that do for me

And those who do not

Among the bench

Among the ground

Among that mountainside

Among that cloud

We must reach it

That destination

Between that plain

Of imagination and destiny

Of fantasy and desire

Of truth and fiction

Of race and creed

Of sex and religion

Of death and life

Of morals and horror

Among the common ground

Among that sandbar

There is an ocean

Where we once belonged too

An ocean of colors

Of twinkles and currents

Of a surplus of stars

And spacious lives

An ocean of wonders

Of delicate beings

Of a generation undiscovered

And limitless time

Among that time

I will be there

Waiting for thy to come

Waiting for something real

I continue

I always wait

Until I die

Until I die

One day,

Many people will say,

“I wish it was me, and not him.”

© 1997 David Greg Harth

97.02.03.00:00:00@31USQWNYC