Mordechai Geldman

Something in me repeats in an obsessive beat
that I may have lost something
or left it behind
in the café or the bookstore
where I'd been
I searched my possessions
and no loss was found
nor did I discover what had been lost
but the loss
kept asserting its existence
through palpitations and minor fits
Athenian sophists philosophized:
"A thing you haven't lost
is necessarily in your possession
you haven't lost a tail—therefore, you have a tail
or vice versa
what you've lost was necessarily yours"
but what have I lost?
I must look for my loss
in order to know what I'm looking for
is it an object or a thing or the thing
and was it mine before it was lost
or is it that some inner authority
is trying to bequeath me, like a Hellenistic sophist,
something I had never possessed
as for example a chance
as if I ever stood a chance
...

I had a revelation
at the SuperCenter in the mall
I was trying on a polo shirt
of an apple-green shade
and between the two mirrors
I saw my face
and my exposed chest
and it occurred to me that I am ripening
and that soon I will drop like an apple
and will crash onto the warm ground
and a thump will sound

and the earth will not shake
and the sea will not flood
and the sun and moon will not go dark
...

On the bus across from me
sits a handsome dude
a Japanese letter tattooed on his neck

Why don't you get a tattoo as well
says my brain
a dragon or a seagull or a unicorn
will endow you with a sexy youthful look
even though it is rather late

And perhaps you're tattooed already
my brain continues
a secret tattoo
that sees but is not seen
which at one time was commonplace in your family
a row of blue digits
a number on the extermination line

For on this summer morning
you are on the extermination line
considering your age
your state of mind

And a conciliatory thought comes—
it is the cell phone number of a lover,
long lost in the distance,
carved on my shoulder, on my arm, on the tablet of my heart
...

You give of yourself only partially
refusing to give me your body
yet my body doesn't give up, it persists

Am I not like Ahab
chasing across the vast ocean
after a white whale
a primordial creature of the depths
whose formidable motion
may yet break my boat
sink it under the breakers

Still, I'd rather stick to the eastern mentality
to depict my state of utter sentimentality
I've become addicted to chasing after deer
I'm the hunter with an arrow in his heart
I'm the hunted hunter
hunted by the deer
...