;.cRetype from prinout MORE OX; Selected poems 9/87--3/88
;.l1,2,64,66,1,0,10,78,192,2,15,25,127,10,0,
=2moreox
Retype of printout of More Ox
Will not included poems included in =2ox87

Codes:  
{ I wish I hadn't said that }
[ I wish I'd said that instead ]


Title page:
MORE OX:  Supplement to In Search of the Ox with Gilden HOrn

More selected poems with at least some Jewish content;
from Tishrei 5748 (ca. 9/88) to Adar II 5749 (ca. 3/89)  

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*

"Jolly good" said Moses,
"whom shall we send?"
 ...
"Yes, quite; but -- might 
 WE not find someone more -- "
 ...
"Quite; yet -- surely YOU, above all --
 ...
"Yes, yes ... well --

(detouring passers-by eyed askance
 an exiled prince, perhaps
 from Africa, thrusting a shepherd's taff
 groundwards while burning eyes leaped up
 and incomprehsible words fell through distended lips)


              :  The Annunciation of Don Quixote

      Refs:  "of uncircumcised lips"
             "for he had married a Cushite woman"

N.B.:  The Palestinians apparently refer derogatively to someone withapparent African ancestry, as `thick lips'

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* 

ADD TO 'CALENDAR':

as faces in a mosaic
revealed only as mist blows away
they live among us.

      Yom haZikaron, 5749 (1989)
      
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* Bruria on the 19th of the 18i

& Essau too that night lay down
bellydown
and seemed to see
a ladder black in a lake
    one foot anchored on earth
to climb cownward
becoming greater and greater
until he drown,
or ungrasp and gasping break through back to life
and at least lifting face
start again
very small.

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"The greatest jihad ..." *

mean man, Moses
some say, who
humbled own soul

so, to do mitzvot
bid habitual vices
and bargain yourself down.

     * "... is that which one fights against oneself."
                           the Prophet Muhammed (a salaam aleika)

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Reb Nachman on Minimum-wage Job Ops

Going to hell?  Give 'em the finger:
do one last mitzva
on the way down.

[N.B.:  I'm not now quite clear why I associated this idea of minewith the teachings of Reb Nachman]

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Encrypted Yom Kippur Sermon

and Lucider from luce to fire
fell, some say, failing
to --
      bend ideals to livign -- 'fallibility', if I may; or say that
not passion but virtue betrays us,
beguiles the monkey mind with dreams
of premature immortality;
so, petulantly waiting to glimpses of mankind's immaturity
[sic, 'to glimpses'; 
but probably typo for 'to glimpse' or 'for glimpses' ]
would (parody godlike judge)
damn me, damm you
hasatan, c'est nous.

N.B.:  Heb. ha=the; satan = adversary; falsely concretized in theChristian heresy.
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*
Let us begin by pretending
that once upon a time
(say, amidst Musaf of Shemini Atzeret)
a straggly goat with the scarlet ribbon
walked up on the steps of the Tmple
unto the High Priest
and said:
"buddy gimme 2 buckets of cool spring water
and a quarter-bale of your best alfalfa
fresh-cut.
Ribbon's still red.
Redistribute this necklace of miniature monsters
that vomit my voice
to your flock to repent for themselves;
still time if they work quick.
Maybe I'm your Elijah."

The High Priest re;plied to the goat:
"Elijah or not,
eat your hay and go back 
    to the desert of Sinn
that the rains may soothe your thirst
and the ribbon turn white with your bones.
If thney could then they would have;
let us begin by pretending." 

      Kefalonia, motzi Shemi Atzeret, 1988

Notes:
    Briefly:
    Cf. eg Kitov on Yom Kippur; also the acoount in musaf Yom Kippur,suggesting that atonoment of Yom Kippur was seem as pre-requisite tothe life-giving autumn rains.  
Everyone knows that if you don't get through the gates by Neila onYom Kippur, the deadline is extended to, and I suppose through,Sukkot.
The poems's arugument, of course, is over the role of delegated("priestly") atonement; 
its tone is eg that of Dostoievski's Grand Inquisitor (in some bookthat I once maybe read a few pages of).
Sinn is part of the southern Judean desert.
The phrase 'hard travelin' is that of Woody Guthrie, z'lb.

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RABBONIM HILLONIM

As sunset colors rise to the crescent moon
and are pushed back into the sea by blue-black night
unrolling to reveal three stars,
men sit inside houses of prayer
capped in black.

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Many years later realized
and wept then -- Essau,
stgill breathless from running through forest trails, green
chewed up birthright
pale black bookworms.

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As Plato's prisoners
found the light less blinding
they looked for walls;
finding none
thought themselves nowhere.

The year the haredi
constricted the infinite to a stifled cry
  my soul fled to Tel Aviv
seeking release in the celebration of the shuk.

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Remus Rebus Rerun

doty dadi rabi don't you
  piss in the stream
now the fish can't see
good; gotto go upriver
try to try again
doty dadi rabi you can stand right there now
but
better button down
your fly, bye 'n bye.

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On Hof Tzitzit

I seek in the sight
of a boyish girl with perfect breasts
relief from our cold winter's reign
of blows and piety.
Muse may I now praise
fresh-caught lobster quickly boiled; scallops fried in wine:
through such innocent communions
may we from hubris be redeemed.


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the Rebbe's indestsructible picture
followed me around all summer
reproachfully.

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Protest strike

Last summer
Jonathon Daniels
stopped wearing a hat.                    
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and yet
if our Rebbe said
the moon was made of green cheese
adn we're all going there for shal shudes,
I'd forgo the cholent
at lunch.

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in his last public appearance in eretz Israel before YOm Kippur
the famous Rabbi confessed his sin:
"Once a poor crazy shlepper wanted to come home,
and for three days I couldn't make up my mind
to write El Al a rubber check."

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MORE SPIRITUAL POEMS

              2 takes of Porpoises

Porpoises
arch through their heaven
to dance through depths.

    with a breath of heaven
    porpoises dance through the depths

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Blue-green poem

        (1)
Glimpsing her standing outside, praying
I notice my muddy boots.

        (2)
Sun blown free of the clouds
beam of light
in a pond's green depths --
her glance.

                                         (Amy Lillien Shames)
                                          ca. 1988

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Picking Apples  Take 2

Know
where you will be
if the bough breaks
and if the bough breaks
where will you be;
then
you can pick apples.
                                          
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Down-shifting

Alling, the acrobat
thanks the veil.

     Tired of spiritual crises?
     Have a drink.
         {(Home from a hard day on the front
          the soldier goes out to a cafe.)}

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To play
ping-pong
defensively
stay quite attentive
reacting as needed.
Don't scheme.
Turning past fir-trees [downhill] on narrow skis.

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[ How to Play Basketball ]

When someone's closer
pass;
when you're closest
shoot.

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In the right seas
a sailboat accepts, at last
the waves
draawn by a chosen mark.

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Swimming aross a lake  --
don't get half-credit

       (Knickerbocker Lake, Boothbay (Maine), ca. 1950.  Et. seq.   

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Bum's Zen

nothing on my back
anchor to tomorrow
look dumb, stay loose, all eyes

go with the flow
roll with the waves
slip into the darks, sleep with the earth
when you're cold, shiver

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waves on a Dead Sea
how quickly you rush
to break on the shore.

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cooked as good can be
it's still a turnup
but can't throw it out

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who else can we be
but the little boy and girl from the Palace
who lost their Father
who lost their Mother
who find each other
who else are our friends
but those wise-eyed bums.

Unexpectedly I glimpse {Her or Him}
at the edge of a crowd.
The courtiers won't let me pass --
my bastard brothers.
The moment passes; a bum again.
============================================================== ==

teenage mother
holds up her baby
to watch the passing train.

         Nahariya Junction, Oct. 18, 1988

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Roadsigns in the Holyland
gravestones over history.

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[An] Ambivalent Pilgrim

In quest of Jewish roots
he comes overland to eretz Israel
bearing a tinned ham.

-------------------         

& [and] a Reluctant Confession

I must
        I suppose
admit:
        I fed
		(forgive me, please  
                                    when
                                           or rather,  'if'
                                           you read this
		the campground cats
		that dam'd canned ham.

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In the Athenian National Gallery
Poseidon's balls
look ordinary and vulnerable.
I re-cross the sea to land
"tender and faint of heart"

     Refs:  Leviticus [QV] exempts from military service, inter alia,those who are "tender of heart" and those who are "faint of heart"

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Armed only with slingshots
they wait by moonlight
in rocky olive groves
steadfast 
against the imperialist march
of suburbia.

                      :Commuter Blues

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Leilia, leila

like popcorn
or rain on a window-pane
bounding a dark night
machine-guns on the [shooting] range

                                (Moshav Meor Modi'in)

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MICKEY MOUSE BOOT CAMP

      "the we should bruise our aged flesh in cruel armour"
                     Shakespeare, Henry the 3 4 or 5

or Haverat Bill on Frango:
He ate, he shat; he's a good dog."
body on overdraft
dream anachronistic
I observe the perversity
of courting the vulmerability of bodies.
     (Can't fix it, don't take it apart.)
Innocent as Adam or the dog
body does his duty
though mind grow gross:
We die only of cummulative regret.

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Uzis like airplanes
change nothing --
superfluous accessability.

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.a2
Home Guard                 Haganik

Pre-dawn Sunday:
dressed in my battle-gear
I kick out the cat.
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as she said shalom
   to her daughter
so, l'hitraot
naked, life-giving
body to body
{heroine of Ras Burka}

Notes:  Would be neater in Hebrew.  Ref:  On Ras Burka, in the Sinai,Israelis swimming nude were machine-gunned by an Egyptian soldierwho, according the official explanation, went beserk.  One womansaved her daughter by lying on top of her.  The solder was imprisoned[by the Egyptian authorities], and subsequently suicided.

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[N.B.:  This is a 4/90 minor revision, maybe not at best better, 
of the version in =2ox87]

Kabbalat Shabat
sun beams from behind the hills
Sephirot palace hues


few pale stars above
waning moon in western sky
rose dawn beams -- tzitzit 

eastern sky lightens
pale green to pale blue
pale-ing moon on dark blue sky

crows and bluejays call
a mist blows over the pond
from the heron's tree

cornstalks turning brown
rabbits walk across the road
white-tail deer bound off

mint, sage, basil, thyme
diamomd dew on garden grass
motley of pale greens

     behind the blue sky
     yellow sun bursts forth in joy
     like a strong woman

in the stone-cooled hall
flute notes in the quiet air
earth grains at noon-time

green fields lit golden
the birds are setting up camp
pensive time -- Yitzhak

cool of day drifts back
spectrum of darkening blues
looking for three stars


                               Ruach Camp -- Abode of the Message
                               1982, 1983
                               to Noor
                               Revised 4/90, Moshav Meor Modi'in

{Extensive Notes in More Ox; not retyped here)

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