טובלי סימיריאן
למה לכתוב; למה ליצור; למה לספר סיפור?
...בגלל המחשבות שהיינויש ללכוד אותם ולנטוע אותם מחדש בעולם כאילו הם פרחים קטנים שעומדים לצוף לנצח.
ברוכים הבאים לבית הגידול הצנוע של טובלי
"הייתי רוצה את הסיפוק מהידיעה שגרמתי למיליוני אנשים ברחבי העולם להבין שיש יותר דברים ממה שאמרו לנו שקיימים".
קרסקין המדהים, 1971
שיר היום
הרבה קרה בעולם מאז 2023.
אנחנו במלחמה בפשיזם.
האנטישמיות מתפוצצת באמריקה ובעולם כולו.
מי היה מנחש?
אבל...אנחנו עדיין כאן.
אנחנו כותבים שירים.
אנחנו חולקים את השירים שלנו.
אנחנו תומכים במשוררים...עבר, הווה ועתיד!
לקריאת שיר היום היכנסו לעמוד "פרויקטי הכתיבה של טובלי".
זה אפריל 2024!
הגיע הזמן לכתוב שיר ביום!
READ TODAY'S POEM
Day 29 Write a description of the legs of a grandparent (or other old person from your childhood): walking with them, sitting and crossing them, clothed or unclothed, their appearance. Integrate that description into a poem about anything else.
What Happened to Pa?
The vase (that’s “vahz”…get it right). But truly, it’s an urn (get that right, too). I prefer accuracy but don’t mess up a short-lived life. Be courteous, final wishes matter. It won’t be ash, like the remnants of cigarettes, all mashed in an iron dish. Just thought I’d let you know. It’s a whole person, man/woman, but does it still matter? For you, it will. They won’t let you keep anything. Just so you know. Prepare yourself.
Remember that day in the garden? Corn as tall as the sky itself? Tomatoes melting into the sand? Some were eaten, some given away. But you remember each piece, don’t you? It will be the same. A complete body, flesh incinerated; skull pulverized into bone chips, a missing stomach, grey arms with matching legs…the last of a generation burnt away, filling for some lazy kid’s comforting beanbag chair.
Back to the garden. It’s not just about fertilization or human compost. I have a question. Do you remember me teaching you to use the hoe so water gently covered each seed? You were so cute. So little, standing about knee-high, holding my legs tightly. You would not let go. I had trouble walking while you clung to my calves like a baby opossum. And now, what’s left of my bones, my arms, neck bones, those legs, will all fall through your fingers like a seed. As it should. Just pick a place where the soil is thick, and the rain has a regular history. Pray for luck.
But I beg you, a little child, looking up into what were then my eyes. I beg, as you begged, to never let go of those, thick, muscular legs. Keep secrets. Water the afterthoughts we tend to leave behind. It’s much better than crying, or missing what you’ve allowed to blow away. Just bring the right amount of water and what’s left over will stick to the air. Nothing will be lost. Any day you think of me, simply reach into the air. I promise. That bony, sinew-laced leg will be your bar of security.
It’ll be a new ritual, free from sadness. It will be much better than some kind of cemetery’s perpetual care, those dead stones, dying flowers—just pieces of strength reinventing the world, generation to generation, one seed at a time. Those legs will not leave for heaven. I’ll be somewhere. And, I bequeath, only you will know my exact location.
© Tovli 2024
Day 28 Today marks the beginning of the 18th week of the year. Write a poem about your 18th year.
שמונה עשרה /18
No matter what we may dream,
nothing remains.
That day. My secret. 18 begins a life.
הייתי חייל בצה"ל/שר"ל
Accepted inside! Year? 18. Months? 18.
Long life. Belonging. Walk like a soldier.
Serve. Be someone beyond yourself.
Here’s your rifle, shaped like a rake, shovel, and hoe. Cultivate.
The days I used to count
softly at first: 18…36…54…72…90…108…
It will skip that way forever,
meaning, we do remain. We dream
the happiness upholding each year
of long-lived worlds and how they speak
or listen bringing holiness along. As it happened,
18 is not propitious—just eternal.
I am begging you—18, over and over…
…the way the grandmothers embroidered our school clothes
connecting each thread…perfectly
their brows furrowed, the stitching—
18 beats until creation; what begins, then remains,
18 pebbles, each grave in its time.
רק קבור אותי בין עמי
© Tovli 2024
Day 27 Imagine a famous historical person not living being interviewed for TV today. Something like Edgar Allan Poe on death or Sylvia Plath on beekeeping or George Washington on crossing the Potomac (or his getting false teeth). Write it as a one-page scene.
This Again—Instead of Never Again?
Nelly Leonie Sachs—visits America
Pesach 5784/2024
Nelly. I dreamed you back to life. Are you watching? The star has turned dark. Again. The call was for Never and how long did this voice last?
Yes, there was an “apple core sown in the solar eclipse”. I saw it. One difference. We did not fall. We stood. We walk and march behind our own soldiers. The world has been shoved inside a walnut shell and the sun is covered like a thousand dead bodies dancing with the Torah.
How cute—America, no longer human. America, no longer intelligent, searches for a wick instead of a candle. Feel sorry for her, because there is no them. They torment and have forgotten what it means to live skinless. They cannot speak their own language, yet they protest.
But our eyes still recognize Job beneath a fig tree.
American eyes have died and drifted into a hollow skull as chaos, as onlookers. Those who raise no hand, have mistaken murder for clean-up-on-aisle three and have not shaken the dust from their ovens or the bones from the soles of their shoes. Yes. We have halted here, as you prophesized. We witness the light, but it has taken on a distance that offers a lonely star that shines like ice instead of warmth.
This again. Instead of Never Again. It’s the world’s wound, bleeding beneath its fingernails. G-d still hears. G-d knows what they’ve done, what they’re capable of. So, write a poem; read a poem. Pretend it is breath, a way to maintain life and belonging. A special plea that will remind and cultivate G-d’s imaginative resolve.
Do you remember saying this? “If someone comes from afar…and it’s winter, dress him warmly…who knows his feet may be on fire. A stranger always has his homeland in his arms…seeking nothing but a grave.” These are your secrets. The crumbs you scattered and left behind.
Are we the strangers, the orphans? I say, “No longer. Never.”
Are our enemy’s feet on fire? I say let them turn to ash. I say sweep them into heaven. Let G-d provide a free ride, in fact, a prepaid Uber.
Oh yes. You’ve finally arrived inside that constellation, haven’t you?
Fine. I too have no home yet hold the metamorphosis of the world like a soft apple.
I’d forgotten your strongest teaching: a prayer can never say Amen.
If you were here, Nelly Leonie Sachs, could we call you by your first name? If you were actually here, standing quietly somewhere in New York City or maybe the West Coast, you’d be the best refugee of all—smoke rising from chimneys, a card game in the air.
Everything is ending…but in the distance, is it not strange we continue to plan for the next day—
beginning, beginning, beginning…
…every constellation the universe thinks it owns, belongs to us.
Isn’t that what you’d say? Isn’t that what sorrow and tears mean this time around?
© Tovli 2024
Day 26 Write a prose poem describing one or more aspects of a post-mortem: the minutes after someone’s death, funeral, cremation, or the memorial a year later.
Little Red Jacket
I invented a story. I gave it a red, leather coat with ruffles—something Michael Jackson might dance into and toss to the audience while leaving his electric stage behind. But it was my mother’s little red jacket. She chose it to wear every Friday with black skin-tight leggings and rhinestone slippers at the beginning of her eighty-fifth year.
“The balls!” I thought to myself. Then I asked, out loud, at a volume she could not help but acknowledge. “What do you think death will be like?”
“Quick. And, incidentally, make sure you aren’t around. The last thing I need to see before death is a kid with a dumb ass look on her face.”
“Maybe it would be an enlightened face.”
“Impossible. You never learned how to hold an unfiltered Chesterfield between your fingers or pour a bottle of wine in such a way it never becomes empty. Which reminds me: Where’s my Prosecco?” She poured a glass and forced me to fetch a fist full of ice cubes, each one dutifully molded into the shape of the ace of spades.
That’s when I began my story, deciding to wrap it in red leather. It took a long time to finish. There was only one character. There was only one voice. I made it sound like my mother yelling at the top of her lungs, begging her kids to return home for dinner.
She was thirty years old when she started yelling for her kids.
At forty, she left home and went to work. At fifty she planted roses in the field next to the house Dad built her. At sixty, she wanted to travel the world with me. At seventy, she disappeared and would not answer letters or phone calls. At eighty, she asked if she could move to Cleveland and live with us. It was that or a West Coast nursing home. She’d buried everybody else.
In her eighty-eighth year, death was quick. It went like this: while lying in a dark room, her eyes opened forever. Her lips mouthed a gap of unacknowledged secrets. The cupboard above her bed slammed shut and a displaced spider walked on air. My mother didn’t even bother to wave goodbye, pretend to see something lurid or beckon as a pastel light delivered that cooperative of sand concealed in the distance. Resistance wavered like an apology when there was nothing left to say.
Of course, I made that last part up. I wasn’t there, by design.
Eventually, I made the whole affair into a story that ended with a woman who insisted on wearing a flashy red leather jacket to her mother’s funeral. She could barely remember her mother’s face or voice, but anyone who mourned the loss that day could not get those leather ruffles out of their intrusive little minds. They tasted my mother's voice while they ate cucumber and mayonnaise sandwiches without crusts, smoked cigarettes, and poured their wine over ice cubes that reminded them of various card games.
It was as if the dead had left the stage, tossing what was left of a dancing presence into the air for anyone to seize or wear.
(c) Tovli 2024
