2 Poems by Mel Waldman

ALEPH

I search for Aleph,
the holy point where all points
meet in unity.

Aleph is oneness,
the mystical point of the
sacred universe.

The holy Aleph
is multiplicity too,
1 and 1000

and numberless in
the incomprehensible
universe of G-d.

The first letter of
the Hebrew alphabet, it
is the first letter

of some of G-d’s names,
and the sacred symbol that
G-d is one.  It points

to Hashem.  Without
making a sound, it moves us
closer to our G-d,

toward the Ein Sof, the
Without End, the Ultimate
Nothingness, the Void

from which all life comes.


LITTLE MAN IN A COFFIN

The little man, shriveled up and still,
lay in the wooden coffin, his gold
tooth glittering in the vast silence.

Once a furious sphere of dark energy
that whirled and swirled around me,
and inside my head, forever inside,
he was Father, a wolf that devoured
my spirit, my unforgiving cannibalistic
Father whom I loved and loathed.

He lay in the wooden coffin, his dark
brown eyes vacant and far away.  I
bent over the coffin and whispered,
“Fire and ice, ice and fire.”

Inside my brain, a boiling, seething
heat overflowed, a waterfall of fire
cascading down and flooding my
psyche.  Yet a cold chill replaced
the heat.

I can’t recall how long my emotions
were wrapped in ice.  I took a deep
breath that spanned decades of despair,
exhaled my rage, and spoke through
the eerie silence to his empty dark
brown eyes.

I whispered, “Father, I forgive you!”


Bionote

Dr. Mel Waldman, a psychologist, is also a poet, writer, and artist. His stories have appeared in dozens of magazines including HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, ESPIONAGE, THE SAINT, and AUDIENCE. He is a past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis and was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature.  He is the author of 10 books. I AM A JEW, his most recent book published by World Audience Publishers, is a collection of essays, memoir, short stories, poems, and plays about his exploration of his Jewish identity.   He is currently working on a novel inspired by Freud’s case studies.  His email address is mwaldman18@optimum.net. mwaldman18@earthlink.net