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Scaling the Scaffolding

S.R. Lavin

Frida Khalo told Carrie Weems
that while she painted
from her bed Diego scaled the scaffolding
and reached the heights of the world.

So much more her life emerged
a woman of her times,
I would have wished to be her lover
slumbered in her bed.

My real life never quite
reached my poems
but what didn’t kill me
shaped me into stainless steel,
forming a deadly blade
broken on the battlefield
of what was lost
and could not
be found.

“But that was then and this is now.”

I saw my death stretched out
against the night sky,
ablaze and full of glory.

I wandered in the caverns
of forget and embraced solitude.

I drank the milk of paradise
in the backseat of an old car

content to be forever lost in

the landscape floating before me

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S.R. Lavin

Born in 1945 (d. January 2019), S. R. Lavin (aka Sholom Lavin) was widely published in the U.S. as well as internationally in England, China, Poland, Israel, Japan, and The Netherlands. Among his books are Let Myself Shine (Kulchur Press, 1979), The Stonecutters at War With the Cliff Dwellers (Heron Press, 1971), I and You (an original version of Martin Buber’s Ich und Du), Metacomet: The Saga of King Philip, and Journey to a Lone Star (Four Zoas Press, 1976), Big Meadow/New River (Jerusalem House, 1978), Perdido, a folio of nine poems (Jerusalem House, 2007), Voice in the Whirlwind Poems 1978-2007 (Red Lead Press, 2012) , and Mahat (or The Essence of Being).

Author: S.R. Lavin Tags: poetry Category: Poetry August 7, 2012

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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