;.l1,2,64,66,1,0,10,78,192,2,15,25,127,10,0,
;.l7,10,119,192,2,70,127,10,0,
=2spo8489
Retype of SELECTED SECULAR POEMS, 1984--1989
Erstwhile input as =besthock  4/11/89
That input presently misplaced.

Title page notes those are taken from:
Only the Whiottler's Art:  Collected Meta-Poems
From Who can we Learn
Collected Satires
Hock and Soda Water    =hoc!(hic

------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Secular Titles include:

Blue Reiter usw.         =clopclop

Pip preserves their Trip

"Us it devours"  

=================================================================
.p
I.  FROM:  ONLY THE WHITTLER'S ART:  COLLECTED META-POEMS

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


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

Caveat Lector Detour

to let my poems' titles sometimes lie
on bottom
as punchline 
             is

     :Fixing the Sin of Lilith

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

Portrait of the Artist with his Creditors

The Chef regrets
that certain push pigeons
claiming kinship
have insisted upon sitting
in the buffet
rather inadequately disguised
as tomatoes.

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

Narcissus ponders and polishes his well-wrought phrases,
then wrapt, seals his soul and falls into a love of gazes.

                                     ca, 1963

------------------------------------------------------------------
                                             
Ok:  after 40 years
finally can write
English, somewhat
       but
poetry's only an
ancillary language; tacked-on capacity --
the craft of packaging
trivial insights neatly.

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

I wrote this haiku
waiting for the light to change.
Stop light's lot sharper.

                        ca. 1976

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

Poems clambering like cats
to be let out:
"What's my name?  My name?  Mine!"

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

My best unwritten phrases
sit on a top dark storeroom shelf
of reverie
closed with a cloth
that sometimes blows open.

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

The Poet Speaks

Seriograph.
masks within masks.

------------------------------------------------------------------
l7
[#l7 LL = 110 chars. min.]
Kafka in a Condo

My envoy gallops forth
but 
ours in an age of retrospective magnanimity:
one offers him a fresh
           pony 
                 a burro
                          a kangeroo
                                      with a fresh-pressed clown suit
                                                                       & a bucket of booze in a pocket or two
so breathless, he casts forth at your feet
a message, of sorts.

------------------------------------------------------------------
l1
Return to #l1 LL=standard (65 chars)

Aspects in Amber

I'm not here.
These, my affected reflections
crudely confront you
pretending identity;
imagine what dialogue you will,
I'm out.
So I say.

                         (Summer, 1989; Cf. Zelazny, Amber series)

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

Betake we must to wine, bereft of wenches.
The Gallo callow poesy etc. quenches.
The breaking day plays bongo--bo~~ngo ball off all our senses.
Hell, might's well 'scuse the booze; it's ['twas] less pretentious.

                                        (ca. 1974)

------------------------------------------------------------------
[here's from memory another poem about the poetry readings at theGrolier Bookshop (Harvard Square, Cambridge (Massachusetts))]

A minor, cigarette--short-winded poet
each Wednesday at the GROLIER holds Court
wherein each piece (it is a recent craze)
must find some fault in what another says.

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

[and, ditto, about the style of eg Creely (from 33 variations etc.)

the duck bobs
bottom's
up; like a well-known
poet with hic-
cups.

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

What I learned at the Philosphers' Conventioln

We seek
a bright white young man
properly stoppered
to measure fearless ideas through a bottle dropper.
Not like these, please,
that rant, pant, rave, and wave-
r, tipsy--top-
sy, the Raggedy Andy and Mopsy'
s of acadanemia; we
deem decorum seemlier
and procreate a proper pecking order
of minds intense and dry as typewriters.

                               (ca. 1965)

------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================
.p

II.  FROM:  'FROM WHOM CAN WE LEARN'

[Add quote from Pirke Avot]

Said my boss Cowboy Jack
"Your friend in the Big White Hat":
"There's always something to do:
if you don't have a thing to do,
grab a broom and sweep the floor."

                  Wolfboro, New Hampshire, apr. 1956

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

The Kansas rancher I quit cold
drove me to town, cashed my check, and put me on the road
    with a sack of apples and oranges
He said:
"We're all looking for something better.
I figure when a man needs a hand
he needs it right now."

(Santana, Kansas, apr. summer '65)

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

My nephew explained ot his father,
"Don't you understand --
when somebody wants something,
they want it right now."

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

Max Finstein said,
"Rick thought of a commune
as a place to hang out & smoke dope;
I talked him into starting a new world,
alas."

               (New Buffalo, Arroyo Hondo, N.M., ca. 1970)

------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                          
Jane said,
"You can fall down
but you can't fall up."

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

Chicano dave says,
"If you're going to be a bear,
be a grizzly bear."

           (New Buffalo, ca. 1969)

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

A Zuni said,
"We are a peace-loving people
and so, if someone seeks to attack us
then, if at all possible,
we run away."

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

In my mud room at New Buffalo
I built a big stone corner fireplace.
Blond Larry did all the work
but I told him what to put where.
He said,
It's a lot harder to do this job
to your specifications.

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

Meyer said,
"Yup,
sometimes in this country it can take all day
to make 3 phone calls."

                         (Moshav Shadmot Mechola, 1984)

------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================
.p

III.  FROM 'COLLECTED SATIRES'

Running for President in '84
Gary Hart climbed Mt. Mansfield
half-way.

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

Automatic stuck in his jeans
the bank guard
mists the potted plants.

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

FAUNTLEROY is mellow:
he can stand anything
and stand up for mothing.

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

P.T. the Executive Elephant
has a staff of 10
to pick up after him.

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

Arik Sharon landed at Ofra and said
"What do you want?"
And all the people answered,
"Build us a factory!"
Now Ofra has a factory
with nothing in it. 
                                (1985)
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                      
POPINJAY's cousin the Great Blackbird
has enough brains for two
fortunately.

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

RAILROAD BILL
don't even piss
without estimating the angles;
and if the sun must shine
he'd prefer it don't do so in his town [domain]
without discussing arrangements.
If he tells you the time
request a second opinion;
if he shakes your hand
count your fingers.

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

Brother Din-din corrals men
into [unto] the house of prayer [House of Prayer];
answering, heaven sends him down
only daughters.

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

.p

The meter reader said Shalom
walked next door
read my meter
cut the circuit
left a bill
and drove away.

------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================
.p

IV.  FROM  HOCK AND SODA WATER:  Collected Secular Poems 1984--1989

  the way your cat         stops
eating
        some unexpected delicacy
and looks up
              quizzically
as if to sasy,
"you know, this is really quite nice."

(West Medford, 1983)

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

flying toward my home
mourning a lost love
but oh, the stars

                           (4 December 1984)

------------------------------------------------------------------
                           
after a sunrise rain-squall
white storks on a field
of fresh-cut alfalfa

                           (Mehola, 1/30/85)

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

the halil I lost
how I want to play it now --
lonely winter evening

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

The Poet as Movie Extra

"Fools' names, like their faces
oft appear in public places"
obviously; but why?
Consider the matter in abstraction:
Kilroy was everywhere
yet never was ...
or all those plaques
grasping for immortality ...
and don't overlook concealment
(autumn squirrels hiding nuts)
the charm of buried treasure,
however trivial.

{N.B.:  I was an extra in the Quomran scenes of the Peter Ustinovmovie, 'Murder on the Orient Express', Golan-Globus, 1986. Bearded &wearing a hat, I'm the first one to pass Lauren Bacall (Persky) asshe walks from somewhere; it's an outdoor desert scene shot atQumran.  I've never seen the movie; don't know if I made the cut.}-----------------------------------------------------------------
.a2
Pity the Egged egg
I ate, I thought, for breakfast:
all morning it demanded
additional recognition.

=================================================================


Punk Pandora

don't; though it's not
ineffable, inscrutable, or even
ununscrewable;
indeed may yield
innumerable layers of rational answers
to unimaginable questions
and aquiescently trail off
into exponentially infinitessimal madness,
!unhand that screw-driver!
don't uncover, don't look;
call a computer repairperson.

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

Sacked again
I regretfully recall
things I wouldn't steal.

------------------------------------------------------------------
[and similarly, from memory]

I didn't do
half the things they think I did
and they don't know
half the things I did.

                                 (Boston/Suburban Boston, late '70's)

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

Rain and Miles Davis
Torn lily drifting downstream
Brandy in the glass.

                            23.02.88

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

The charm of sin
is simply its
illicitness,
like the warmth of stolen sleep
after the alarm clock rings.

------------------------------------------------------------------
         
Quintessentially macho
our cat Spunky
padded purposefully down the road
each morning
and returned in stoic dignity at evening
having slept all day
behind the first big rock.

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

One day
when I was 10
my father trated us to Pizza in teh Italian Section
I said, "I suppose I should thank you."
He replied,
"Of course; it was very nice of me."

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

American Moderns

Grandmother safeguarded our heirlooms
after the Crash
but fifty years later
she got sick;
so we called an Antique Dealer
& took her to a Home.
She got better and said,
"Well, that's that obligation."

------------------------------------------------------------------
          
Billy-goat Days Gone By

On practically my last acid-trip
as the posse of my mind was closing in
I commandeered an Appaloosa
from behind the Placitas Adobe
mounted and headed out
for the high air of the Sandia
except that I spent the next two hours
trying to get through the junk
of my own back yard.

------------------------------------------------------------------
                   
Truncated poem

Myself when young
in quest of truth
with a capital  T   LSD
did take to cinema and stage
& from that lofty vantage viewed
The Bible and The Magic Flute
shlepping a chick behind.

Shows shlock; dates disaster.

------------------------------------------------------------------
.a1
The Poet Contemplates his Lift

        "I had it of Leah ..."
             Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III:1

Just a yekke or family fault
to throw nothing out, no doubt;
yet to lose those unused objects
imbued with memories
or enclosing unrealized dreams, never disowned
breaks me up.

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p
                               
[ How to Play Baseball ]

look dumb
stay loose
and try not to swing before they pitch

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

In a shallow harbor

Too late, as usual
for afternoon repentance
he takes evening absolution
on the rocks
with a squeeze of lime.

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

Bewailing poverty
awaken to birdsong -- 
summer daybreak.

(7/14/86 -- Ein Hemed [Campground])

[Bewailing my poverty
I wake to the birds. ]

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

Some
things
seemingly take too much time
but
't ain't so much the heat as
the circuitious logistics of poverty.
                                              (ca. 1986)
------------------------------------------------------------------

Supper of bread and garlic
my boss walks by and says
"Good appetite!"
                                       [Bet Zayit Campground, 1986]
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                   
The feel of a swallow
from a warm dark
half-bottle of beer
in which a bee had been trying to swim --
makes me long for home.

                                    [Corfu, ca. 1989]

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

"The legend'ry Lawrence of Arabia"
reminisced the old gentleman
"once told me,
'Machine-gun everyone.'
I enquired,
'Who shall do it?'
and he replied,
'You will.'
After which I ate a stout breakfast."

                    (from a documentary on Jordanian TV, ca. 1987)

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

In a Latin mode

Only at my poetry
not old affairs
do I look back now in admiration --
how well I spoke [ wrote ] then
and how childishly we acted.

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

The great white horse halts
mightily whinnying
gulping in air
and dreaming of water
while rider relaxes knees & reins
removes a mask, and rubs his borw:
"Shit," says the Lone Ranger,
"lonely night with no TV."

(:White Knight off-duty)

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

Embarassed by that uniform
Superman regrets
his granted with:
to masquerade
in blue-serge suit and tie
as Clark Kent.

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

Boogie-Woogie Self-Destruct

Athens has so polluted itself
that its marble temples
turned grey from shame.

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

Jew Posing as Exiled Roman

Having, in imagination
myself most dutifully flagellated
for all adducable errings
I find I most regret
the costs of my few good deeds. 

                            for the centenarry of T.S. Eliot, O.B.E.
                                "fifty lashes with a wet noodle"

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

"Left me high and dry"
Skipper sailed off north,
Sailded off into the rain.
Glad I ain't out there.

                              Sami, Kephalonia, Oct. 6, 1988

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

T.S.' B.S. Revisited

Bleinstein in knickers [ ! -- 'tennis shorts' will do ]
but armed
with "Let's Go to Corfu"
I shamble past mopeds and all the goyim
come to do their thing
and blunder in front of the Old Synagogue
built 1537, obsoleted 1941.
Only the names remain
on mistransliterated street-signs --
Solomou, Koen, Kaplou ...

Refs:  T.S. Eliot, 'Beerbahm with a Baedecker, Bleinstein with aCigar"
"Let's Go to Greece", 1988 p. 206 (research by Ellen Goodman)

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

A Pornographic Movie

gives the devil his due:
the set of sex sans residue
of love, and freed from complication
of art, angst, or even procreation.

                                        (ca. 1973)

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

Hume's dam'd fallacy:
anthing could always happen
or, if you prefer,
might never --
e.g., the gambler's creed
amd consternation of bereaved.

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

[From imitations of selected fragments of Heraklitus:]

Each sunk in his own mind
looks up at other bodies passing by
suspiciously courteous.

Ref:  Cf. Heraklitus, Fragment Bywater 1:  
"though the logos is common to all, each acts as if he had his ownunderstanding"
------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================
.p

l7
#l7  LL=110 minimum; indent (Tab 1) stanza 2 60 chars.

Cubist Sirens' Song

"Oh
    Escape
into modalities of things
 by escalator parameters
 to indifferent objectives
and everywhere
the abstract peace
  of a personalized value-free well-closed universe.

                                           "Forget
                                         et al., etc. -- e.g.  

	necessity of care-
	ings; incessant interdepend-
	dence; omnipresent heros
	and all your watchful, reproachful dead.

	The wistful disillusionment of betrayed lust
	Magpie echos of a squandered mind
	Futility of re-re-re-re-re--repealed vows
	Too much unanswerable longing
	Sadness of abandonned nostalgia
	Obtuseness of tools, these too
	and too, too many ways of self-condemnation."

                                                      but

the mythos lied;
it isn't as they said
the Sirens are chained,
we drift away.

=============================================================================================================
.p
l1
#l1  Resume standard layout; LL=65 chars.

Flip-flop Song

at 'sixes and sevens'
or 'sevens and sixes'?  it
mixes me up
whichever it is &/or ought
to be or Akiva:  if it don't matter
and you can't decide
go back;
water flowing over alabaster
will wait.

     Ref:  Zohar?:  "If you come to a place ..." etc.


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

Sinner expecting demons

HST OK'd
the A-Bomb drop and
"slept like a baby" but
ever after 
wouldn't go anywhere  [ never after / went anywhere ]
saying [ only ]
"When they want me, they'll come and get me."   { delete 'and'? }

     from and article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine

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

Quickly the Germans ruined everything
the Jewish bride would ever have
so three times a day
the old lady triple-locks her door.

                                         (Jerusalem, 1986)

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

Mark- and mock- ed by German tourists
the prosperous old Yiddishce lady at the Dead Sea Spa [Hostel]
discreetly stuffs leftover
  bread eggs cheese and fruit and a few napkins etcetera
into her handbag.

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

April Fool's Song

On the Terrace of the Hebrew University Faculty Club
uninvited, I sip imitation Vermouth
this mild summer evening
and contemplate, far below
the fairy-tale veil
of mercury- sodium- -vapour glares
disguising all the old stone walls
as only the caterwauling factioned blares
recall the frantic ancient feuds
that wait for daylight to resume.

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

sitting, I suspect, opposite
the old family hotel
blown to rubble 36 years ago,
at a table for 4 --
what ghosts invited me today?

                      10 Ben Yehuda St., 9/21/86

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

      the
   3---in---1
S  T  O O G   E S
SUPPORT       OUR
P A N   T H E O N
mudhead deities who
see     say   &  be
NO            EVIL.  

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

Occasionally to sketch in a few clear strokes some minor useful act...          

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END DOC =2spo8489
This Modify 4 Jul 03  18:45

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