A WALL OF POWER

The Western Wall, also called the Kotel is the last remains of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, which formed part of the enclosure of Herod’s temple, resulted in the encasement of a natural steep hill, that became the Temple Mount. The Kotel is holy due to its connection to the Temple Mount and is holy to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. This holy place was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The remaining wall is all that is left from the Temple Mount. 

A WALL OF POWER

Can a wall really wail or is that a fail-safe fallacy to inspire the fire inside

Does a wailing wall speak to inadequacy inside?

Can a wall 2000 years old wail sufficiently to quell my pain?

Can a wall help me see the heartbreak between Abel and Caine?

Can this 2000-year-old Western wall help our world find peace?

Help nuclear energy threats cease

Pray for wars to decrease

Help humanity stay safe without regrets

Pray no one forgets the past

The result of making outcasts leads to a lambaste

Will this wall provide a safe space to do more than cry about what’s left?

I try to shrug free of my chains 

There’s no escaping the Western Wall’s remains

Power soars through my veins, the wall opens my reality

Feels like labor pains, I feel my soul strain to let go restraints

An African lady, dressed in high fashion speaks in tongues I can’t understand. 

She pounds her chest, pounds the wall with a closed fist, and screams “Jesus” 

The rest of the words are forecast

African Lady’s fist pounds her words into the wall’s veins

A religious Orthodox Jew rolls her eyes momentarily aghast 

Then returns to her private prayers

I try to imagine African Lady’s sorrows as the wall absorbs them

Overcome with waves of feeling, I struggle to see through my tears, fears appear,

I return my gaze to a wall I don’t know but somehow feel like I’ve been here before, 

Wailing inside, feel all aglow, wait for my soul to be lit by peace

I place my shred of paper with my prayers for our world to heal

The wailing western wall, a holy grail

My hand held steady against a small sweet spot of stone, mine momentarily,

Press my hand against ancient limestone

Can’t control the flow of my tears 

Hard to reach through all the bodies to press my hand through 

Other women clamor to touch the wall

Maybe think the wall will heal the

People from many lands and many religions, 

Lay our hands on together, on this sacred stone wall

All hope for love, relief, a better life, for everyone

The wall crowded with thousands of us praying together, 

People from many lands and many religions all here like one

Lay our hands on this sacred stonewall, ancient limestone 

Pray for family, pray for peace, 

Pray for a better world 

Pray humanity will survive, whatever befalls us

Pray for love, relief, a better life, for loved ones

For everyone, everywhere, humanity together, for once and for all…

Joy AKA violet performing "I Sing The Blues For You Today" with Demetrius Daniel, Charles Worrel, & Dubblex.

Joy AKA Violet performing, "I Sing The Blues For You Today" with Demetrius Daniel, Charles Worrell, & Dubblex. JoyandDubblex Poets

I Sing The Blues For You Today

I want to do poetry like Billy Holiday singing the blues

I want to do poetry like Ella Fitzgerald

I want to be me singing my holiday blues

Billie’s songs are poetry so fine it makes me think I’m her doing rhyme

Thoughts about Billie make me go off line, hook line & sinker; she puts me back in time

I sing to my lover, I want to make your poetry mine because you spout rhymes

Observing my life become an unending grocery list of things to get done

Your life or mine, yours is on my mind - the list of to dos keeps growing exponentially

Number 1, try out a mattress, 2, buy it, 3, buy new locks to keep someone out number 4, find someone to install it, make 10 million calls. Keep writing lists. What did you say? How many sessions, any lessons in storage? Will the Divine power of intervention help?

I don’t want to bore you with the details and derail you from my song.

Damn, wonder if I’ll ever see Willa Dean again– oh man, you know the women I mean

Kept her head wrapped up like an African Queen with her creamy coffee looking self.

Willa said the secret to good potato salad is to go heavy on the mayo

Willa Dean days, they’re all in a haze now. I was so high back then.

The memory lingers, listening & watching while she told stories. She’d whisper, her voice barely a breeze, tell me about her lovers, say, “I’m gonna get me some.” … I’d get confused & asked, did she mean her husband or lover.

She’d show me wilted lettuce and bring it back to life telling me about her lovers, drugs, & children while making potato salad.

I thought - she’s a woman of many talents, a stoned cold junkie and a working mom combined

The nose that knows, her preference was coke, good moist coke at a good right price too on the upper - upper west side in Washington Heights, 162nd street to be exact

Willa had class & style combined; she took me to dress models at the Ritz one time. Got paid for it too. It was such a pleasure to do. I even got a pair of designer gloves out of it.

People accepted Willa everywhere we went –

Willa was friends with a famous New York jazzman and his wife, a New York City teacher. We were at jazzman’s apartment, small tight crowded living room, upper west side 90’s.

Willa’s friend sat across from me staring at my big breasts. I can see how tight your muscles are.

Let me massage you she said aggressively hurting me so bad physically

we had an argument instead.

Passing through hundreds of lives so many colors

Let me take you back to what we share - strivings for love – wanting to go somewhere –

Wanting to discover who we really are ~

see ourselves through the eyes of others and – finally see who we really are.

Extend this power to the umpteenth degree. We still wonder who they think we are ~

Uncover recover to return to who we want to be

Dreams are reality - stop thinking, dreams are the color of my true love’s hair

Black is the color of my true love’s hair, his dreads caress my bare hands

A whole-years grocery list pressed into a foggy mist of autumn red

turns bright chartreuse before bleakly the list dissolves before my eyes

True colors make my heart sneeze amidst a perpetual mist of violet-blues
A dream more real than a memory