;.l1,4,60,66,1,0,5,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,5,0,
;.l2,4,75,192,2,15,127,4,0,
;.l3,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l6,22,49,193,2,42,127,22,0,
;.l7,2,124,192,2,17,42,127,2,2,
SELECTED SECULAR POEMS, 1984--1989

From:  Only the Whittler's Art:  Collected Meta-Poems
       From Whom Can We Learn
       Collected Satires
       Hock & Soda Water    [hic!(hoc]

             
                                     Steve Amdur
                                     P.O. 23529
                                     Jerusalem 91234
                          
.h2, besthock 4/11/89  --

.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 pushy pigeons
claiming kinship
have insist 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!"

-----------------
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.

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




Kafka in a Condo

My envoy gallops forth
but
ours in an age of retrospective magnanimity:
one offers him a fresh
l7
                          pony
                                a burro
                                         a kangeroo
                                                     with a fresh-pressed clown suit
                                                                                      & a bucket of booze in a pocket or 2
l1

so, breathless, he casts forth at your feet
a message, of sorts.

-----
Aspects in Amber

I'm not here.
These, my affected reflections
crudely confront you
pretending identify;
imagine what dialog you will,
I'm out.
So I say.
          
                    (Summer, 1989; Cf. Zelaney, 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 less pretentious.

                                           (ca. 1974)
--------------

What I learned at the Philosophers' Convention

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"

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, N.H., 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 to his fasther,
"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)
.a5
------------
A Zuni said,
"We are a peace-loving people
and so, if somone 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 Shedmot Mechola, 1984)

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 nothing.

-----
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.

-------------
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 on his town
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 the house of prayer;
answering, heaven sends him down
only daughters.

-----
.a5
The meter reader said Shalom
walked next door
read my meter
cut the circuit
left a bill
and drove away.

        Moshav Modi'in, 2/14/89
.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 say,
"you know, this is really quite nice."

(West Medford, 1983)
---------------------------------------------------------------

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

(12/4/84)
---------------------------------------------------------------

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 imortality...
and don't overlook concealment
(autumn squirrels hiding nuts)
the charm of buried treasure,
however trivial.
----- 

Pity the Egged egg
I ate, I thought, for breakfast:
all morning it demanded
additional recognition.
----- 
.p
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 acquiescently 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.

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

         23.02.88

-----

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

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

------
One day
when I was 10
my father treated us to Pizza in the Italian Seciton.
I said, "I suppose I should thank uyou."
He replied,
"Of course; it was very nice of me."
-----
.p
 American Moderns

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

----- 
Billy-goat Days Gone By


On practially my last acid-trip
as the posse of my mind was closing in
I commandeered an Apaloosa
from behind the Placitas Adobe
mounted and headed out
for the high air of the Sandia
except that I spend 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 viewd
The Bible and The Magic Flute
shlepping a chick behind.

Shows shlock; dates disaster.

------
The Poet Contemplates his Lift

      "I had it of Leah..."
           Shakespeare, Merch. of Ven. III:1

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

-----
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 povery
awaken to birdsong --
summer daybreak.

(7/14/86 -- Ein Hemed)
-------------------------------------------------------------

Some
things
seemingly take too much time
but
't ain't so much the heat as
the circuitious logistics of poverty.
     
------
Supper of bread and garlic
my boss walks by and says
"Good appetite!" 

-----
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.
--------

"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).
-----
In a Latin mode

Only at my poetry
not old affairs
do I look back now in admiration --
how well I spoke 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 brow:
"Shit," says the Lone Ranger,
"lonely night with no TV." 

(:White Knight off-duty)

-----
Embarassed by that uniform,
Superman regrets
his granted wish:
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 gray from shame. 
--------------

Jew Posing as Exiled Roman
                        
Having, in imagination
myself most dutiflly flagellated
for all adducable errings
I find that I most regret
the costs of my few good deeds.
                                      
l7

            	for the Centennary of T.S. Eliot, O.B.E.

	                         "    "fifty lashes with a wet noodle."
--------------
l1
"Left me high and dry"
Skipper sailed off north.
Sailed off into the rain.
Glad I ain't out there.

      Sami, Kephalonia, Oct. 6, 1988

-----
.p

T.S.' B.S. Revisited

Bleinstein in knickers
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 Synagog
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 a   	    Cigar"
     "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
or art, angst, or even procreation.
                                        (ca. 1973) 
----------
Hume's dam'd fallacy:
anything could always happen
or, if you prefer,
might never --
e.g., the gambler's creed
and consternation of bereaved.

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

------------
    Ref:  Cf.  Heraklitus, Fr.By1:  "Though the logos is common to all,    	     each acts as if he had his own understanding"
.p

Cubist Sirens' Song
l7

"Oh 
    Escape
into modalities of tings
  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 say:
the Sirens are chained,
we drift away.                                                         
.p
l1



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,
saying,
"When they want me, they'll come and get me"

          from an article in the New York Sunday Times Magazine 
-----
Quickly the Germans ruined everything
the Jewish bride would ever have
so three times a day
the old lady triple-locks her door.

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

-----
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- -vapor glares
disguising all the old stone walls
as only the caterwauling factioned blares
recall the frantic ancient feuds
that wait for daylight to resume.       
------
.p


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

     Cafe Nash, 10 Ben Yehuda St., 9/21/86

-----

       t h e
    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.

-----------
l1
Occasionally to sketch in a few clear strokes some minor useful act...
-----
