JULIEN BERMAN - POEMS

Julien Berman is a tenth grade student at Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC.  In 2019, he won the Jaclyn Potter Prize for student poetry presented by The Word Works, a DC-based poetry organization.  In 2018, his story “A Partition Parable” won a gold prize in the Scholastic Arts & Writing National Competition.  

​Sailboat Mathematics

A stretched canvas tarp
Not ungainly in style, but again not cut in a perfect polygon.
A wooden beam or two
Slung upwards and out, at ninety degrees.
A slit box in the center
Inserted down and through, to make a perfect line, not a parabola or catenary.
A rushed first-class lever
Protruding out the back, pushed this way and that, a reflection on the coordinate plane.
And fringed, taught chords
Not through a circle, but acting as hypotenuses for right triangles
A wedge 
Parting the water, its graceful figure a pelican; or a snooty cormorant
Her bow
Turned up, a nose in scorn
More cloth at the top,
To signal what awaits. 

​

Ode to a Candle

Creator and founder of the new,
Close companion of the blossoming sun;
I bow to you
To shake free my sorrows and regrets.
For now, as I look up to see the celestial fireball vanish
and graciously grant a silver orb the power of the sky,
You remain steady
Illuminating the bitter and somber black--

The sun has set. The birds are silent.
I set down my drink
Half empty
And I take a seat at my oakwood table
Pull a small match box out of my pocket
And stare at your faceted wick. 

I ignite your flare, your catalyst
And the memories drift and fade away
When you alight.
I set my head in my hands.

Who has not loved you and sung your praise?
Speak out! For I will come and do justice to the
Mortal beings who do not savor your power.
He who has now departed has
left me his candle, and so
Has given me hope.

I watch the fiery spade of flame
Sway, as a gust sweeps through the silent
Ripples of dust as they slowly twist through the air
And I realize that you are not one to banter 
For such powerful dance needs but a spark.

You are god of internal beauty
But you have not been stoic and composed for eternity
You lash out at the evil that tramps through our midst
And you rest, poised, in your wax-smeared cup
Fading ‘til your last hour, minute, second
When I replenish your deceased carcass
With a new wax stem



Please, temper your might

And spare us, your lowly subjects, from your ire
When you are wrought with rage.
Where, oh master, is your cheer?
You have set us forth onto a new road of light
But you are not joyful.
You do not revel in the beauty that you create.
Expel the sorrow that the darkness which you
Constantly fight has set upon you.
Kill it I say!
You have a right to enjoy the heat you ooze for others
As your fire shimmers in the viscous air
And I am content
With just your warmth.

​

The Lost Tale from a Poet in ‘Nam
​

I never dreamed of my anonymous name,
Another vet in the heart of America at last
Instead I write my mind, emerging from the crowd,

With nothing to comfort me, nothing but shame --
For fighting in a massacre truly blemished my past.
Now I have an experience to write my mind out loud.

Each stanza a message, to unforget the death
How once I longed for it to hide from people’s hearts
Once escaping me, now the message is together again.

I come as the cry of the meadowlark’s breath
Singing mournfully when all the protest starts
I am not the placid war hero, no matter America’s urge

I stand strong here under the olive tree
My life has a certain fallacious quality
A happy-ending gone awry in me
As I cast aside my veteran name at last
All vengeance forgotten as a smile graces my dirty past.

​

​The Cappuccino Machine

Those times when you caress the cappuccino machine
For the worthy customers behind the counter.
After resignedly greeting the person, you ooze the thick life force out of the filter
And you stare into space as you fill the time between orders.
When you glance at the TV all you can see
Are jittery color changes and cuts that blend together into ads
And time after time you are shaken awake again by the entry chimes.
A man walks up to the counter
And orders a mocha with that sort of half smile half nod
He asks for your name
But you know that once he leaves seconds later
He will forget it, having banished you from his life,
You fall from the foreground of the present to a meaningless memory in the past
Of another low-class minimum wage acquaintance.
At the end you return home--
Yes you are still living with your parents--
And you squeeze a cappuccino out of your kitchen coffee maker 
For your father, who isn’t so bad when he’s sober, 
A state he never seems to be in when you’re home.
While the coffee brews, you bear the brunt of his stupored tantrum.

And that moment, when he raises up his right fist to strike you,
You shrink against the kitchen wall, next to the machine,
Molding your eyes to match
the pained expression on your face, which you know he is only half seeing,
feels like a metonymy for your existence:
Alive, barely
Mobile, though crippled
Self-sufficient, yet still weak
Obedient, but fuming inside your weak, crippled, dead, filthy body.
And then you give him the lukewarm cappuccino,
Which he sips, and he finally returns to reality.
Tomorrow, you rouse your battered body and you
Rinse and repeat without change, or purpose.


​

Lost
​

When in the course of my many events
I stumble far from the pack
 
Like the fathers of America
I panic, agonizing over each step forward. 
 
The King’s last breath goodbye to the one being lost
Is a sultry blessing;

It splits the metal shackle tying the colony down.
And lets America explore passion.

But it is also a curse; America’s becoming lacks purpose
And thus she is prone to rambling

And so, getting lost has two meanings, don’t you see?
The only difference is that one is intentional.
 
But is that really a difference?
Aren’t they both purposeful?

When I escape the chains tying me to my family
I am lost to them, but I am not lost.

I fall under the first definition
Reveling in my newfound opportunity and agency
 
When I stumble off into the woods sometime by accident,
I am lost to my world, but I am not lost.

I fall under the second definition,
Exalting in my rambling reverie.

So you see, neither definition actually defines the word lost
Simply the state of being apart.

That brings us to the word found;
Is the state of being found in opposition to being lost?


Is it running back to where you were before?
No, that’s just returning, and so you mustn’t have been lost.

Is it waiting for another one to see you?
No, what if you are metaphysically lost?

To me, it’s all a question of want.
Do I want to be found?
 


 
So please tell me:
How do I know if I am lost, and how do I know if I am found?
And after,
 
Is the nation lost?
Will it ever be found?

​