jack galmitz | coast to coast

Coast to Coast

I dipped myself
in your blood and bruise.
Now I don’t know what to do.
You were five,
in a body cast, abandoned,
abused by a male nurse on his rounds
and you froze, couldn’t move;
CRY OUT. I don’t know what to do.
Now you feel trapped-
you were alone and unable to move-
you were abandoned and in a cast
that covered you but not
through; I would have been
a steel valve that let nothing through for you.
Think of it economically:
It reoccurred over, over
& you froze remember, each time in the future,
hoping it would be removed
by another or by you
(that’s how us traumatized figure).
You like collage? I do.
You and I became drunkards,
addicts, hoping to end the repetition:
we didn’t know each other:
but we both liked jazz,
SO
we’ll glue it together
on backdrop paper
in the center
Giotto’s L’Ascension,
in the right corner a still
from Snake Pit of Olivia de Havilland
and Dr. Kik dancing together.
In the left maybe a newspaper clipping
of the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper about the big bang theory.
Then beside the center, the yellowed newspaper clipping
Of the United Nations adopting
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Would that be all right?
War broke out then
between Palestinians and Jews
and we weren’t born so we couldn’t choose.
What should we do?
We can combine the elements
with fine black lines and small black globes
and add in empty spaces lines crossing a point
like faint stars, the way Jean Miro liked to do.
You can become a psychoanalyst:
that’s right for you
and write the memoirs of your
multiple suicide attempts and rapes that were renewed;
I’ll become a poet, a micropoet, and write about you.
What else is there to do?
You’ll stay on the West Coast
and I’ll stay on the East
and what we share will unite
The United States or maybe just a few.

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