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Poetry || SubmissionsFrom "The immigrant's lament"(1992) By Moshe Benarroch * In Morocco I was the center of all the parties a social phenomenon always surrounded by friends until I came to Israel and ended up in a corner the corner of all the parties I stopped going always on the outside the outsider When I came I became a poet. * I can see you Moshe I can see you my friend Moshe a twelve and a half year old boy sensitive and lazy I love you Moshe I see you after the Bar Mitzvah your mother announcing that tonight we are leaving I see you with the suitcases always looking for something secure suddenly nothing is secure I see you in Ceuta waiting for your father to sell the buildings for peanuts the Arab took out a knife before he finally paid in Spain I see you on the ship on the way to Algeciras I see you dreaming dreaming of the land of Israel dreaming a dream a wonderful dream with a temple a dream full of light I see you full of joy traveling through Spain in Valencia, in Barcelona see you full of happiness and full of hope that the land of Israel will heal your brother Ari who is dying see you in a hired taxi you are wonderful Moshe trying to be loved by everybody tired and lazy but always nice I see you arriving at Marseille entering the bus there your father is angry at the manager of the transit hotel the sewer is plugged shit is flowing everywhere everything is wonderful but there is shit everywhere you cannot know what is awaiting you I see you Moshe landing in the land of Israel half-drunk in the airport you don't understand what is happening but you don't kiss the land or more precisely the asphalt I see you a week in the boarding school of Aliyat Hanoar a week you cried without stopping I see the nice tutor coming from the boy scouts saying you you are too big to cry and you cry even more that it's going to pass and you cry even more I see you Moshe and my heart goes out to you I love you Moshe and suffer with you there in Zichron-Yaacov when will you forget Moshe when will forgive a week later you mother came to save you took you to the secondary school in Pardes-Hanna they didn't want you in 9th grade in spite of skipping a class because of your age and your mother “why should he lose a year?” insisting and insisting till you finished the final exams at sixteen and a half and then waited a year studying physics and mathematics at the Hebrew University she pushed you to this too always pushing you wanted to walk slowly It took you so long to learn to go slow my heart goes out to you Moshe Moshe the immigrant Moshe looking for redemption Moshe disappointed Moshe crying Moshe becoming religious Moshe a half-year atheist Moshe who doesn't get along with girls Moshe believing in reincarnation Moshe studying mathematics Moshe studying literature Moshe wanting to be a poet Moshe running after literary editors Moshe editing a literary review Moshe writing a novel in 3 weeks Moshe writing thousands of poems Moshe writing ten novels nobody publishes Moshe always trying to be loved by people Moshe after people who don't understand his sensitivity Moshe who wants to be loved for his poems Moshe my heart goes out to you truly Moshe I love you in all your searching in all your impossible searching Moshe who knows everything will have an explanation one day. Two things always writing and listening to music music especially after you visited your cousin in Madrid arrived religious and returned a heretic there you bought your first Van Morrison record since then you bought them all and thousands more always music and writing to save yourself from going insane in this crazy world my heart goes out to you Moshe the poet Moshe the true poet I love you at last with all your travels with all your suffering I would caress you in every step of your life caress and kiss you me who hated you so much who suffered so much from you now I love you all the you's you ever were. Twenty years twenty passed since those two weeks that changed your life the last week of august and the first week of September nineteen seventy two everyday changed your life making you a poet writing in Hebrew in your land and not a writer writing in a foreign language in a foreign land twenty years in which you tried so hard to escape not loving yourself not wanting to be like the others writing about suicide angry at God twenty with asthma and without asthma with allergies and skin sores angina and digestive pain crazy eating, women problems trying to escape reality trying to escape Israeli society traveling abroad as much as possible and coming back to Paris, specially to Paris dreaming about living there marrying a French woman emigrating to France, what else, but she, what else, just not to go back to France, each one his own escape always weak in front of women and difficult to make changes you are still here with all the oximorons and all the morons possible inside your head feeling the most here and most there that is possible so close to the land of Israel and so far away from the State of Israel I love you Moshe and I enjoy writing it at last I love you with all that you did and all that you failed and all that you fucked up and all that you are ridiculous and with all your running away from here and escaping again and again escaping and still, staying here I love you Moroccan, Spanish, Sephardi, European, looks Ashkenazi, Western, Eastern, Mediterranean, Middle-eastern, Palestinian, African, French with all the things you are and aren't I love you crazy and insane and most logical but then it is you it is all the you that made me and I love you. * I embrace you go to the world love it give it all you have to give even what it can't accept give the world all your love all you have learned and your experience in all your previous lives it won't accept but it needs you the world needs you it needs your love give it but don't expect any reward go to the world go to god go don't be afraid anymore I caress you goodbye go your way I kiss you goodbye go. * This land in which I was not born said the immigrant this land in which my children were born now I leave it like a man leaves his lover who cheated on him like a man leaves the mother of his children in pain in joy in suffocation in liberation that's the way I leave this land in which I did not plant a tree in which I did not seek revenge and if you say this is a descent I will tell you, said that same immigrant, it is a descent meant to go up and if this is your face I am an ass and if these are your legs I am a wheelchair everyday in my land is suffocation and everyday abroad is oxygen I travel twice a year abroad to have enough oxygen to breath here and not suffocate in this ghetto, in this mellah, this land in which I was not born my children were born here this land didn't rejoice toward me and didn't give me joy nor did I rejoice toward her in spite of not having another land beside her not having but, said the man angry with tears in his eyes, It is impossible for things to be done infinitely just for lack of alternatives. * My childhood, a black flower I did not pick Tetuan mountains around her Arab children shouting “awadel yahoud” and throwing stones at us on the way to school hugging the girls in class the old Arab who touched my chin the Arab beggar to whom I always gave a coin my mother always knowing what's good for me the smacks I got from her when I lit matches and almost burnt the house hugging the son of the Rabbi at ten Saturday night at grandma and grandpa's home and shouting and noise the whole family my cousin getting on my nerves I hit my cousins the vacation house in Restinga and tennis the motorcyclist who broke his hand my daddy's toy store he brings me a red Mercedes me and my brother breaking it with a screwdriver my sick brother who died at 8 the scissors I threw at my sister my brother Levi disappears and we're looking for him again the recurrent dream of the falling lamps private lessons in Arabic the giant house made of granite Levi and me climbing the walls Levi and me not going to the solfege class and going to play soccer the cakes we bought after the Shabbath prayer my uncle hitting me when I touched a moving car the cruelstick of the teacher breaking the stick after class the three loyal classroom friends the club I started with my cousin Levi mama and dad travel to the U.S. to take care of my brother I am left with grandma and grandpa in the vacation home playing and swimming the one handed French tourist suffocation asphyxiation suffocation my childhood a black flower I did not pick a black flower I did not smell I did not remember I did not forget I did not love I did not appreciate I did not hate I did not understand my childhood I don't miss you nor your smells nor your wealth everything was asphyxiating pressuring my childhood I don't miss the famous Alliance school maker of students in the universities of Strasbourg, Madrid, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv I don't miss the Jewish community nor the family who always knows what's best for the others nor the feeling of superiority for being true Sephardim nor the smell of Ladino nor the ballooning wealth nor the imagined honor of the family nor the synagogue I was always forced to go my childhood my lost childhood my insensitive childhood where are you, where did you go if you ever came. More poetry by Moshe Benarroch at Ariga Poems by Moshe Benarroch More poetry by Moshe Ben Aroch Visit Moshe Benarroch's website at http://www.authorsden.com/moshebenarroch Today's Situation
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