Life :The Experimental Sonnet

Why write a poem? Why paint a picture? Why dance a dance? We choose to limit the way we express something as a way of making that expression more beautiful. When we love someone it's become a symbol of love to give flowers. Flowers are not forever like diamonds and that's the point. The flower is beautiful and fleeting like life and love. By giving something that is so delicate that it will soon disappear we point to the fragility of life. But more. We also say that I'm only giving you this as a way of saying "I love you." There's no capital gain here - you can't put flowers in the bank. There's no market for second hand flowers. It's only significance is that an I loves a you. But why bother? Why not just say "I love you like flowers." Because it's a form of expression. And so is a poem.

Over the week-end I participated in the celebration of two bar mitzvahs. I was there but not there. I was thinking the whole time, as I often do. And I was also in the moment. In and out at the same time. I was thinking about the irony of internal thoughts and how some times you can nearly miss the sad or happy occasion and just be in your own thoughts. And yet I never miss it entirely although I fear that I never experience it entirely. And I was thinking about how what I remember is a function of emotionally experiencing things very strongly and that this can be hard but also wonderful. And I was thinking about how easily I get hurt and how I try to protect myself but when I don't allow myself to be vulnerable then I decrease the chance of my growing. And I've been pondering lately the idea of hypocrisy within religiosity. It's so easy to judge but we should best leave that to G-d. And I was thinking about how some people readily speak their mind and some don't (me) and how it's hard to know when to do which because it's the right thing to do whether you feel like it or not. I was thinking about how life sometimes feels a struggle (for me) and how I often think that's the way it's supposed to be.

I've been thinking for a while of trying a new form instead of the haiku. For years now I've been writing haikus in my diary - ever since I heard David Kach read his Japan haikus at the Bridge Shul (Washington Heights Congregation). And I've been thinking of the sonnet. This is a pseudo sonnet (far from the real thing in some ways, close in others) that came out of the above swirls of thought:


Living and not living
in and out of time
catching missing blessing
moments sad sublime
experience remembered
getting polished scarred
long process redemption
holding up letting down guard
treading on the thin line
between human-hypocrite
between quickly sharing thoughts
or grinning and bearing it
G-d let him not grow lazy
him being known as me.