Friday, April 3, 2026: Cindy Weinstein's "Empty Hands" and "The Tower"

Empty Hands

I am haunted by the ghost of my living son.

I am mourning the loss of my child not yet passed.

Somewhere, somehow, deep in the web of city streets

his body of flesh goes on,

carrying the spark of who he once was…

who he might have been.

There has been no memorial to remember.

No one to speak of his loving sweetness,

his kindness,

his generosity,

his open heart.

There are no loved ones gathered around.

No condolences, no words of sympathy.

There is no grave to visit,

no stone,

no urn,

no candle to light.

There is only

my empty hands,

finally letting him go.

© Cindy Weinstein

© marie c lecrivain

The Tower

Someone ripped holes in all the metaphors

and now the artists have nothing to paint but

the naked truth.

Someone tore apart all the dreams

And now the prophets have no heaven,

Only stark reality.

The sidewalk is cracked.

The stairs are broken.

The roof is leaking.

The rats are eating the crumbs in the cupboard.

We’;re banging on pots and pans

In the kitchen.

We’re shooting off M80s

On the concrete

In the desert.

We’;re making an unholy racket.

The cacophony is a continuous thread.

Screams of the mother.

Cries of the babe.

Moans at the climax.

Wails at the abyss.

Whimpers in the dark.

Shrieks in the flame.

Howls in the air when the white bones fall.

The metaphors cannot be sewn back together.

The dreams will never be rewoven.

The sidewalk is cracked.

The mother screams.

The stairs collapsed.

The babe is wailing.

At the crash of the climax the rain pours in.

The rats are eating the bones at the bottom of the abyss.

So now the artist paints without guile, while

The prophet dances in the corner bar

To the clanging of pots and pans.

In the holes in the metaphors

In the space between life and dream,

In the heartbeat under all the voices

In the heart beat

Under the heart beat

Under the heart beat

is truth

is reality

is love.

© Cindy Weinstein

Cindy was born and raised in upstate NY. After college she moved to Washington DC where she established her career, her art, and her family. She came to Los Angeles in 1993 with her two young children and stayed until she immigrated to the desert of Joshua Tree in 2017. She has been writing, reading and performing her poetry off and on since she was 17. She has been published in a number of Los Angeles anthologies including Poetic Diversity as well as in Cholla Needles and the Joshua Tree Voice.

Thursday, June 27, 2024: Cindy Weinstein's "Babylon by the Sea"

 I didn’t like her when we first met.

loud, sprawling, changeable,

dry breath, wild hair,

perfume sweet

and acrid

rags one day, dior the next

whole weeks languishing in kmart acrylic

sunday mornings organic cotton

vegan shoes

her geography melodramatic, terrifying, biblical

her landscape exposed obscene

I ran to the arms of an old lover

grown attractive with my nostalgia and fear

but his breath was too moist and smelled of rot

his arms constricting

claustrophobic

so i came back to her.

Riding her river of streets and freeways i finally got it.

It is her…

this city, this place

these hills and deserts and valleys and expanses of concrete and asphalt.

There is no need of other, no other place, no other lover.

Her arms always open. She takes me in, takes me back,

lets me go and welcomes me home.

She feeds me when I’m hungry, finds me work when I am struggling, gives me shelter

when the rains come… and when I am riding high again she spreads out her unending

feast.

Craving silence, she wraps me in her dark green places.

Looking for adventure, she sparkles her lights and turns the music up loud.

I fly in and out of her skyways and marvel at her twinkling stars. I crest her hills and

gaze breathless into her jeweled depths.

She is decked in every color of precious gem, perfumed in all rare scents.

She is voluptuous beauty – hills rolling to beaches that kiss the ocean; valleys

surrounded by dark clefts of mountains.

She can be explored forever.

She takes all who come - pilgrims, paupers, pimps, seekers and salesmen, the lost and

the found.

She offers the dream, all dreams living in her prismatic eyes.

She is the gateway to the snow covered crags and the vast deserts.

She lies languid along the beaches where the waters reach out to foreign lands.

She speaks all languages. All colors fill her streets.

I write her songs and poems and paint her rarest hues.

Expanding… I expand into her, inhale her into me.

She’s the City of Angels - Babylon reborn by the western sea.

© 2015 Cindy Weinstein 

Cindy was born and raised in upstate NY. After college, she moved to Washington DC, where she established her career, her art, and her family. She came to Los Angeles in 1993 with her two young children, and stayed until she immigrated to the desert of Joshua Tree in 2017. She has been writing, reading, and performing her poetry off and on since she was 17. She’s been published in a number of Los Angeles anthologies including poeticdiversity as well as in Cholla Needles. She also has a self-published chapbook entitled Lampshades From The Skin of Roses. Today she hosts the desert version of the Feral Fusion Open Mic monthly at the Beatnik Lounge in downtown Joshua Tree.

National Women's Month: Holly Prado's poem "Loss Refuses Safety"

LOSS REFUSES SAFETY

Vacation in Pompeii: gardens, wine and statuary --

Roman leisure at its best. What we see, though:

dead, immortal. At some point here in Southern

California, we'll have a devastating earthquake.

Where I live, there's plenty that could fall on me

and on my husband, cat, neighbors like the man

across the street who's mentally disheveled, occasionally

raving -- usually simply wants us just to give him something.

This is my neighborhood, my home, exactly what Pompeiians

had, along with gods like Dionysus who brought them grapes

and theater. A mosaic of a woman shows her slightly open

mouth, as if she wants to say how much she relishes the necklace

that she's wearing -- beads carry a jeweled cluster to her throat.

Hundreds of years from now, I hope our private histories will have been

written on retrofitted walls which last beyond the quake. I hope my story

mentions Robert, born to madness, and the couple in the next apartment,

Daniel and Lindsay, who are getting married in a month. Let us write

ourselves as difficult, devoted, loyal about love: Pompeiians put their arms

around each other as they died. The necklace and the slight embroidery on her dress weren't saved, but when I look at her -- this Pompeiian soul -- here she is, looking

right back at me. Everybody has a chance at immortality when there is no escape.

2017 Holly Prado

photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Bio: Holly Prado has had twelve books published, primarily poetry and prose poetry, but also a novel, two novellas, and a book of short autobiographies. She's the recipient of the 2016 George Drury Smith Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, given annually by Beyond Baroque Foundation. Along with her husband Harry Northup and poets James Cushing and Phoebe Ozuna, she's a member of Cahuenga Press, a poets cooperative publishing press, now in its 26th year.