Learning Up Front
For as long as I remember
I’ve always
I sat up front of the class
so I could watch Teacher
otherwise I’d be sitting
in the back somewhere
reading lips
between bobbing, swaying, nodding heads:
some were tall
some were fat
some had perms wide or high
some had bushy ducktails or ponytails
some even had crewcuts
that the rest didn’t matter
As long as I sat up front
so I could watch Teacher.
Some teachers
talked chalkpoking the blackboard
Some teachers
talked flipping fanning pages
Some teachers
talked zigzaging rows of aisles
that bobbing, swaying, nodding
heads didn’t matter
As long as I sat up front
so I could watch Teacher.
When my classmates spoke
I never knew who
as long as I sat up front
so I could watch Teacher.
Whether meticulously copious notes were
written on the blackboard or
on blue on white
nauseating ammoniated ditto or
on black on white
ink-blotted, letter-smudged
mimeograph or
read from the book
As long as I sat up front
so I could watch Teacher.
Never once could I tell
how much I understood —
a day never went
without daydreams —
it never really mattered
as long as I sat up front
so I could watch Teacher.

Deaf Way II Anthology (2002)

By Curt Robbins

It’s Esmeralda, Felix
And constant morning gave me grace to say
Simply “Good Morning.” (Darling!) “Will you play?”
And daily you’d defeat me, sun or showers
Quasimodo May Not Dare, F. Kowalewski
It’s Esmeralda, Felix –
She’s such a simple girl
pretty and shy.
She’s a peasant
pure and simple.
Quasimodo, O Quasimodo
ugly and shy
who thinks himself
so good and so fine –
everyone else doesn’t see it that way.
But, O my word, Felix
how they gossip
how they banter
how they plaster
and poison minds
Should we err
how rue is irked?
Should we falter
how ire is irate?
Should we laugh
how contempt is rapture?
Should we succeed
how jealous is Frollo?
It’s Esmeralda, Felix –
she saves us grace
she feeds us hope
she loves us dearly
as long as the broken vase
endearingly enthrones
our thorny rose.

By Curt Robbins

In Der Nacht (In the Night)
For Rose Rosman, Pesach, 1988
You have come a distance to speak
Your heart of a life – no man or woman would
Ever, should ever, relive. It’s like day
And night. But, you see only Darkness –
Where no light can ever guide you –
Rosa, Rosa, in der Nacht,
The darkness is brighter than the flame.
A Nazi soldier was gathering your deaf friends,
Assuring them, with his kindly, guiding hands,
To the trains of a certain destiny.
Rosa, Rosa, in der Nacht,
The darkness is brighter than the flame.
You were such an impeccable child –
Watching them come to take your family,
Acquiescent as silent drums.
Rosa, Rosa, in der Nacht,
The darkness is brighter than the flame.
The Moon outshone by a distant fire
Glowing by night with kindlings of hearts –
Who knows where they went to witness the blackening Sun.
Rosa, Rosa, in der Nacht,
The darkness is brighter than the flame.
Ner Tamid. Ner Tamid,
The eternal flame, has never dimmed.
The joys and smiles are never forgotten.
A new life reminisces the bitterness in der Nacht,
When the darkness was brighter than the flame.
Rosa, Rosa, in der Nacht,
The darkness is brighter than the flame.
?
Blood To Remember (2007)
Beyond Lament (1998)

By Curt Robbins

If I Am At All
…obtaining nirvana is like locating silence
Jack Kerouac
There have been times
of questioning
the state of my being.
The impropriety
of my individuation
in the hearing society –
conform or else?
Should I be different
or beg to differ
would I not
be a part
of this whole?
Am I
by nature
so different
by the silence
it mutters?
Is deafness
like death
so remote
yet so imminent?

Wordgathering (2009)

By Curt Robbins

Going from bondage,
grazing aimlessly
toward a promised land.
Fearful titillations
of hopelessness.
Gone is Man-God to get us laws.
Gathering, at last,
at the bottom of the great mountain,
lost –
singing a sacrificial hymn
out of fear –
praying!
G o l – den God…
G o l – den God…
G o l – den God…
G o l – den God…
G o l – den God…
G o l – den God…
Someone
bewilderedly
cried out:
Golden God?
Moses,
upon his return
with the Tablets,
threw them at
the god of gold;
upon destroying it,
he pointed in the direction
of the Promised Land,
and shouted:
Go with God!

By Curt Robbins

They keep asking the same question:
Are you a Deaf poet
or
A Poet who is deaf?
I shudder at the question.
I can’t even think of a better way
to express the rhetoric.
I’m lost.
Did I mention anything otherwise?
Did I falter at my wordsmithing?
Did I recant from something so obvious?
Did I wreak poetic havoc?
Who am I?
or rather
What am I?
Do you sign?
or
Do you sing?
or
Do you truly hear such peripatetic words?
The matter doesn’t warrant an answer –
I am what you read.

Deaf Way II Anthology (2002)

By Curt Robbins

Long, loud, and cantankerous is the howl raised by the
deaf-mute! It has to be if he wishes to be heard and
listened to.
The Deaf-Mute Howls, A. Ballin (1930)
The universality of ASL
was never the remedy –
diversity among us
made divisions
in our own crumbled Babel.
We’ve estranged ourselves
from the cantankerous world
and muted our own silence.
Still we howl.
The remedy was never
an ultimate solution –
laws were made
like rules in the institute –
to make us
deviously divisive
and indecisive.
We’ve panned out
for escapades
to avoid taxing volitions
for the better.
Still we howl.
The solution has always
been within us
but its invincibility
left us mucking
in perpetuating battles.
We’ve gagged and screamed
at each other
for the righteous claim
to glory but no one
stakes the claim to divinity.
Still we howl.
Tonight as in every bitter sunset
with the hazy full moon
there still will be more
Deaf Man howls.

By Curt Robbins

Have you ever gone
someplace near the Bay
and tried sitting by a grumby,
whiskered,
whiskey-nosed,
lispy lipping leper
of an old, reddened,
sunbaked,
waveslapped,
windsogged,
thick-skinned fisherman
from those windjamming days
amid the odorous
decaying deadfish, seafresh air
listening to the tales
of crab grabbing, oyster hoist-raking days
with gazing agape,
with mesmeric awe –
thunderstruck by his filthy
weather-worn,
yellow-stemmed,
fierce-looking face-carved,
blackened white
meerscahum pipe
clenched between his tobacco-stained,
shellcracked,
rope-battened teeth –
shucking bluefins and
occasional oysters
with rapid sleight
of water-thickened,
short-stumped,
fat-fingered,
bare hands?
No, I wouldn’t have –
I wouldn’t be able to lipread him.

Curtis Robbins

The Deaf Way II Anthology (2002)