Paul Lieber
Disobedience is an integral part of existence. Every act is in disobedience of another. It’s figuring out what to disobey that is the task for enriching the self and society as a whole. Every risk I’ve taken is filled with voices inside and outside telling me I'm making a big mistake. Poetry is disobeying the routine way of looking at things. Writing is disobeying my inclination to take a nap.
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Mob
He was a well-spoken
drug dealer, living with
a girl whose father
was connected and
friends of his father
were on their way,
on their way
to the couple’s apartment
on the top floor of our tenement,
on their way so the couple
fled and left the door open
for breezes,
for looters,
for neighbors,
for my girl friend,
an abstract expressionist
who suddenly swelled with materialism.
She raced up the stairs
to snatch a chair
before a neighbor
could grab it,
an ornate peacock seat for
princesses. I helped her
haul it,
intoxicated with
the easy theft,
our minds dissolved.
We were insects.
We were electric
currents,
flowing from a Persian rug
to a toaster, to a vase.
My downstairs neighbor,
a grammar school teacher
stacked Italian plates.
The swiftly spreading virus
sang a chorus of,
“the couple will never return anyway.”
I found two Dylan records
between thoughts,
tucked under one arm, under the other,
Count Basie or was it Miles Davis?
The music blared as we all
returned to the apartment for
more and more until it
lay there stripped
with no curtains left
to block the sunlight.
San Juan Capistrano Mission
The chipped façade of cream brick.
The uneven plaster reminds me
of my apartment on 17th,
those little hills for floors,
the toilet in the hall and
dreams of the tenement swaying.
Forget stiff interpretations
of the bible and the slaughter
of infidels. Stay with the mortar,
stones and age, the adobe couches,
those motherly laps
in the garden
away from the burn
of sun and the mission
of this mission.
I hear my father through the archways.
“Religion killed half the human race.”
I stroll into the gilded chapel
as narrow as that flat downtown
but the ceiling, with its primitive
beams and mismatched lines, climbs
to the heavens and Latin chants
swirl so,
so I pull up a tier
and pray
as involuntarily as any seduction.
The winding chant pulls me further
to those holy stories, to the creepy almighty,
calling, and I, obedient music, am summoned
past the rape of aunt Jenny,
past the repairmnan fiddling with a hinge,
above the bombings to the east.
I’m over the ruins,
above the gift shop,
above the bells.
A single note.
An infidel.
Rising.
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Paul Lieber's collection, Chemical Tendencies, published by Tebot Bach, was a finalist in the MSR poetry contest. Paul also received an honorable mention in the Allen Ginsberg Contest. Paul produces and hosts “Why Poetry” on KPFK radio in L.A. and Santa Barbara. It is the longest running poetry show in the nation and is an attempt to de-mystify poetry and then mystify it again. Guests have included Philip Levine, B.H. Fairchild, Chase Twichell, Lynn Emanuel, Matthew Dickman, Sandra Alcosser and many other known, lesser known and local poets. Paul’s poems have appeared in The Moth, Poemeleon, Patterson Review, Askew, Alimentum, New York Quarterly, Santa Barbara Review, Solo and many other journals. Paul works as an actor and has performed on and off-Broadway and in numerous films and TV shows. He has also worked as an adjunct Professor in Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University. He lives in Venice CA with his wife and son. Visit his website at paullieber.com.