;.cCollected poems, 1985-1987
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,10,82,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l2,10,75,192,2,15,127,20,0,
;.l3,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
.h2, Collected poems, 9/87 --


 HOCK AND SODA WATER:  COLLECTED POEMS, 1984-1987

                                            Steve Amdur

 

"so sometime lords of ladies intellectual
bow out, unmanned by bawds' love;
gay boys, ineffectual." 


                 
       ("but oh, you lords of ladies intellectual
       tell us but truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?"
                                                    Byron, "Don Juan")














Published by SCAPEGOAT PRESS, 5 Ben Yehuda Mall


.p

              CRAZY LOUIE TUNES

The best of bad-time buddies
he lends what he's got
answers Tora honestly
and knows it's a mitzva to steal food.

-----
e.g. Crazy Louie & the Bum
confront everyone with Everyman damned
affects of pet agonies;
   wherefore I say:
    "Brace your feet & lend a hand
     to anyone you can help up,
     but don't get pulled off balance."

----- 
Crazy Louie too
joins the movies:
instant immortality --
front and center before a reporter
he's kicked off the set.
-----
Observing
Crazy Louie at his ease
perusing Talmud, at his feet
his world in ruins --
posing as poet I
admittedly do the same but 50 times better
measured by the shekels in my pants,
and so on
to the real world nested sets of sharks...
-----

Crazy Louie plays double-or-nothing:
instead of filing for unemployment
he applies to Ataret Cohanim:
if Messiach comes
he'll take a bath and get a job.
----- 
Crazy Louie, King of the Crash Pad at last...
------
So note the
if not innocence
then, oh, say
'non-reflexive ahimsa'
hell, half-ass good intentions
of Crazy Louie and us his ilk
(shallowly judged and trivially used, oh cruel world)
but gallant as a comic-book soldier falling on a hand-grenade)
turn hate inward
and wear imagined derision
like an elaborately constructed crown of thorns.
 

  and the 10,000th Hamlet
here's our old friend, Crazy Louie
hunting for his own Laertes
ruthlessly through space and time
to find a crime fits his punishment.






.p

STUMBLEBUM'S PROGRESS
                                  
                                  ...and Stumblebum begot STUMBLEBUM
                                  whom he rode to Scapegoat Press-
                                  ipice.


An Amusing Hippy

Battered & half-made mad
trashcan bear appearing at tea-time
to be paid off in shlock-shop revelations

------
Broke but fastidious, he suffers rebuffs by retreating into epigrams.
-----

Carnivorous giraffe

From cafe to nescafe
evading individuated craziness
in the daily Consensus
maximum alert at last
STUMBLEBUM on morning patrol
per hidden itinerary
reporting through a secret channel
to an unknown dispatcher.
------
Stumblebum doffs and dons his hat
in reciprocal response
to whoever last trod on his toes
doti or hilloni.
-----
     
 ...Stumblebum's Progress
     through time & space
     centerpiece of his own ignored parade
     preceeded by wishful thoughts, trailed by rueful memories
     hair grows wild dry and grey, eyes age besieged;
     each day an additional 10,000 brain-cells  opt for early retirement
     forgets names as his surviving words grow roots...

-----
.p

IA.  STUMBLEBUM'S LAMENT

Times ain't precisely tough, but
in my mailbox
the only good news
is a draft notice.
     4/22/87
-----
stumbling thorugh a false short-cut
slightly lost, spaced, thirsty and hungry
how delicate the wildflowers
-----

hungry, I can't comprehend
why all who eat ain't happy
-----

I read the restaurant review 
for lunch.
------

I've spent today's ration
of false starts and failures
so soothe my soul with sugar 
drooling Fool  at the Feast
-----

All's said and done 
done again, dozens;
confessed to all I'm sure or dare
begged pardon, not foriveness, for the rest
under the rug;
on with whatever's left of the rest of it.

-----
and on e.g. a 'melting' day
it's
as it were the -  'opacity'
of things that's
so unshriekably infuriating --
slow-motion commotion
all-thumbs stumblebum
nothing in its right place, even
ideas like chariots stuck in the mud
and is the elephant's fear of the mouse
chagrin?

-----           
The pen I stole 
went dry when I tried to write
but then revived, reversed
and ruined my shirt.
-----

.p

Chamsin Downtown mid-day
"Confusion confusion,
I'm not to blame for all this confusion"
said Pound and (after a decent interval) died; or
just one "poem clear & passionate as the dawn"
"distracted from distraction by distraction"
honest man, Dog Diogenes

     Refs:  Pound's last interview, in the NY Times Mag
            Yeats
            Eliot, Wasteland
            "Dog Diogenes take me; with my flask and 
              laggard pouch I leave nothing under the sun"
                  Henry Shapiro as Oberlin sophomore,
                    if I recall

-----
Some
things
seemingly take time
(e.g. 10 times what's budgeted)
'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!" 

-----
A  banquet of praise from Generals and Ministers
leaves hungry troops unfed.
    (Binyane Ha'amuna, 5th Ann. Sar-El Celebration)
-----       
.p
POT-SHOTS

For his 3rd bust
Dave bought a hot-shot lawyer:
facing 3 years max
he got 3.2.
-----
Kalev ben Bored-again
achieved apotheosis
at the Holy Wall
cast as a Major Motion Picture Extra
impersonating a Jew.
----- 

My buddy BUCKLE BILL
chugs 3 Sunrises in one night
at 15 shek's a shot.
Cleaning the barracks
we found 5 shiny jukes
but he grabbed 'em first.
"That's free enterprise"
says Buckle-Bill.
----- 
I owe you a satire, Kimmey
but I'll sooner get a grip
on a 5-foot bowling ball
in a thousand-gallon drum of warm cooking oil
than such a polished fatuous ass
as you.
------
the gang of 4 incorporate
I take out the trash
they bring it back in.
----- 

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

-----

My best friends's left;
disconsolately
I steal his clothes

-----

Mocked by her grandson
the old lady always wears a pin
"Others"

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

Bing Crosby had a masnion
with 100 rooms
and if either one of his 2 sons
slept in any room
with a woman
Bing Crosby would disown him

    Refs:  Source, TV Documentary
           Allusion:  Song of Songs, "Solomon had..."

-----
on the ski-slopes of Israel's highest mountain
the snows measured 3 meters
horizontally

    Ref:  after Haya Leiter
-----
Portrait of young English gentlemen

English lion - alley cat
eaten by a junkyard dog
craps out punk S.O.B.'s
who dare you "kick me"

-----
In the manner of Pound imitating the Chinese

Fools prefer fools
All the best
money, jobs, women and time
wasted

-----

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"
      
-----
LESBIA engaged
makes Kiddush over Bristol Cream
Yonaton the Mitnogid condemns her
for leading others astray.
-----
CHAMETZ GADOL 
in he Chez Paris anglit
gon' mess with your mind, boy.
Baffled by his reflection in black hats
lion-heart reverts to beast.
-----  

.p
BETTER OR LONGER POEMS

*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.
----- 
*?What's-his-name became famous
for burning down the Library at Heliopolis
     (in the lacunae of textbooks, silent afterechos).
More or less prosaically
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 acquiescently trail off
into exponentially infinitessimal madness, so
unhand that screw-driver!
don't uncover, don't look;
call a computer repairman.
------
.p
MISCELLANEOUS

*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.
-----
"In Adam's Fall
we sinned all"
'Old Adam''s rise
to our surprise
directs our soul
back to the "skies"

    Ref:  Quote from a Puritan alpha-bet book
          'Old Adam' Cf. Man for All Seasons
           Plato's seven heavens, as always

.p
UPON DISEMBARKING, THE YEKKE SAID FIRMLY, "THIS LANGUAGE IS NOT FOR ME."

No
need to know
new
language
to tell the sound of bullshit,
nor truth-propositional calculus
to ken a con-job.
-----

Disclaimer with "Gotcha"

Nu; I too
don't always savor
these literary farts
Dear Reader:
   neither of us under these particular circumstances
   had much choice; and poets like prophets & typists
   may claim immunity
   from responsibility
   if not prosecution, retribution, or leastways re-
   ciprical calumny.
----- 

Yankee Yekke Weltanschauung

An intricate network 
of lies defines
as perimeter, parameters, or wha'-['ch']a-ma'-call-
it
civilization or what-have-you
of passion, that,
id est the 
incomprehensible, unmentionable, intolerable
or at least or best
beast, what one can't stomach,
imaginary treife...
.p
PHILOSOPHICAL OBSERVATIONS

Candidly, it's
Pangloss after all
for all is most in order
as it all falls out
    Eureka! cries the suicide
    for falling past the 14th floor
    he's vindicating Newton's law.
-----
The Kindly Philosopher

"I'll kill myself; then they'll be sorry and give me what I want."
Nu; anyone can overload
     --  and today's smug sendoff?
   come back tomorrow
    -- you don't know where I'll be?
  Nu, nu; so hook your right forefingers in your bootlace
  & take just one step toward Heaven
  out of your Black Hole;
  they promise to do the rest;
  good luck and good b''ye.

------



.p
FROM THE REALM OF THE MYSTO-CREEPY

the second-hand sugar-plum fairy
works miracles ineptly;
delivers the goods, but nothing quite fits

----- 
                 [quote from bible on not conversing with the dead]


Ok, ok, 1 more Sermon:

When Van Gogh
entered Heaven
he said,
"Oh shit,
what did I shoot myself for?"

Our poor confused dead,
under house-arrest, at last
by one's own summation                         
Last Judgement by a pocket adding machine.


They try to call back to us
to tell us they must "go away"
and say good-bye
we can't hear, don't believe, won't listen

I have heard from the Wise:
that Heaven & hell then are right here
there's no fairy-tale world to go away to
and the shit in one's own nest
turns to perfume very slowly.
They contradict each other, I think.

Little Joe said:
     "dead don't need our prayers"
     "you only get one"
      and
      "know what they'll find when they get to the Moon? -- dead Indians"

The Indian kids sing:
      "lots of spirits buzzing round my head
       make me glad that I ain't dead"
and walk down by the stream to make love.


------

a bewildered child in a aworld of complacent pygmies
 


.p
Fragments for a Eulogy

flat river on a summer afternoon
sudden white water
dusk so soon?

-----

Death be reasonable
you've made your point
why can't we change the subject?
-----            
The Superjet Aeoroplane Corporation
efficiently whisked up all my luggage and me
but forgot my shadow.

-----

Subsequent bullets don't hurt, they say;
or Creely's Heraklitean
'rivers run -- islands wash away':
supposing my home sold
I find myself losing things
fatalistically.
     
     Ref:  R. Creely, Introduction to Islands
           and Heraklitus, the usual quote

-----
.p

SERIOUS POEMS

Boddisatva taxi-driver
longing to see everyone safely home,
how could you ever guess
who really goes where
and when?

-----
Sitting through the Spinoza Colloquium
I recall dawn at Ein Gedi.
.p

TALES OF MODIIN

Furious Fingers

Behind backs
their uninvited guest
writes satires.
(Think's he's Grosz:  write  pun; 's Kant metaphor.)

    Refs:  Lashon hora:  gossip, "backbiting"; lit. "angry   	      tongue" 
           
-----
"Those on the level of Chelm,"
said the Rosh Yeshiva of Modi'in,
"graduate."

-----

HOFSHI bonds like a free radical;
the Chief of Security
declassifies her ass.

-----
Unlimited ingenutiy:
with whatever he gets
the Exponential Loser can do
another Tower of Babel.
-----
The Fire Chief
kept all the hoses in a locked shed
"in case of fire
heaven forbid"
But next summer the window broke
and stayed broken
because it was nobody's job to fix it
thank Heaven.

-----
On the brows of their Tzaddikim
the local Vipers rest.

-----
The Macher works tirelessly
to fleece the Golden Goose.

-----
For the sake of aesthetics
the road-signs lie unpainted.
-----
Each investment a new challenge to zero-growth economics.
-----
Stuck in the business of being deemed religious, they are noisly halakic.
-----

*MOISHELE THE BOOK-BURNER
shleps to Shtetl Modi'in
on his pre-Pesach Pilgrimage
to offer strange fire.

-----
To honor our Law and holy tomes
the Beit Midrash is sold to goyim
for the feast of Exodus;
shleppers sleep in the dirt.

-----
Asher the Ass in our tulip patch...
-----

*POPINJAY's cousin the Great Blackbird
has enough brains for two
fortunately.
-----
Locked outdoors, I curse in vain the business venture
of those whose capacity to fail is unlimited.
-----
*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.

-----
 
Unemployed entrail analyst

Yishuv doti
lost all my hats
reckon it 's time to move on.
-----
mind of hazzan, "eye of newt"
------ 

"Forest fire!"
"No problem:
Arabs will come put it out;
if they need help
they'll call us."

------
"Snakebite?"
"Don't look bad,
but if you can't breathe
give me a call."
-----
Unceaasingly they try every way to make money except work.
-------
My nice neat summer shirt
is locked up in Shmuel's darkoom
which is locked in thae dirty linen house
of Yehudit.
To launch a nuclear missile
two American marines
present keys simultaneously.
-----     

Won't stand guard
don't fight fire
but begrudgingly troop
before a red sun:
miraculous survival,
thanks in duplicate.
-----
       
Rabbi Asatral Enforcer
of the Lower Mezannine.
-----
.p
ON HIS RELIGION

Jeremiah on a Bicycle

Xerox Mincha and clock out
Shmitta
scars of smog in the valleys
fear Father's tears of fire.

    Refs:  "Sow it in the Mountain, reap it in the valley
            you gonna reap just what you sow.
            G-d gave Noah the rainbow sign;
            won't be water for the fire next time."
                Appalachian Folk Song
-----
*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,
-----
Av Chamsin
there is no "causeless hatred"

    Refs:  Chamsin -- hot dry air inversion with angry ions
           Av -- month in the dead of summer;
                   makes Tammuz (a Babylonian god of sorts
                   who shtick is dying of heat prostration
                   on an annual basis) look positively mellow
           "The Temple was destroyed because of causeless 
            hatred", says the Talmud.
-----
Av again, and again
that set of questions
crude as a constellation:
    what got broken
    should I cry
    when can we stop
    what then
-----
after this evening's pleasant supper
I almost  believe I but imagined
that Vespasian, two millenia dead
will destroy us in less than 2 days.

     (Bet Zayit, 8 Av 1987 C.E.)
----- 

To honor the Creator they pay others to cleanse their clothes in poisons.
-----

speeding to Mincha
the rabbi's driver honks.

-----
She loves a brit; so quaint despite the baby
and feeds her Seder as a snack to the Fishy-Folk.

-----
Peach-trees in blossom
waning quarter-moon of Nisan
in the pardes
your Japanese chametz
is up a tree

"we have forgotten the tree"
perhaps the birds once knew

    Ref:  From a popularly-retold tale of Hassidus

-----         
*Gush Emunim Dream

Loud banging on our Clubhouse door
Guy in a red-check sports-coat:
"Shemi Messias
 Hashim sent me
 I'm taking over."
"OK."

-----

and Shemi Messias
spake unto the members of Members Only
& he says
You're all redeemed
I just bought Beelzebub's Hockshop
on Hashim's credit card
& tore up all the tickets
You can all go learn at Yeshiva
says he.

-----
One Tenth of Av
Kotel Plaza stayed shady all morning.
For three weeks
everyone was lined up halfway back to Lod
to see the Temple.
Then things went back to normal, more or less
except for the tourists.
.a4
--------
Jonathan Daniels asked the haredi
"Is Tai Chi avoda zara?"
and the haredi answered
"Lama?"
-----
.p

On Seeing "The Color Purple" 

 with chopped noses or ironed hair
 and all our depressing successes.
 free at last to fight each other
-----                      
Ridng back-seat on a BMW-500 doing 60
"If it ain't one thing, it's another."
-----
"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 breakfast."

      (from a documentary on Jordanian TV).
-----
dazzling ingenuity at evading escue
moths I mean
I just meant moths; or maybe say
that castle I was going to build --
the cornerstones snuck away
-----

.p
SURVIVORS AND GERMANS

Bully-boy breakage
don't grow grass

    Cf. Jesus, "Which of ye by taking though..."

-----

Quickly they ruined everything
the 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

-----
A Poem in German

Disappointingly, the stupid
most diversifiedly tortured children, etc.
could to their perversedly evil desire
not be exposed;
their eyes said only
'we would have wished for nicer lives'.

-----                                                    

The Poet Visits Iniquity

Rosh Hodesh Av '47
I almost forgave Germans
for being German:
in gesture reconiliationus
stole a camper's can
that said 'HEILEGEFRUHSTUCK'
but the fine print read "Schweinfleish'
so I put it back;'
wait another generation.                      
 
   Refs:  Bible:  "...visiting iniquity unto the 3rd
             & forth generation...."
           Tanya:   but we are forbidden to emulate the
             Attribute of Din.

-----
.p
 
50 Germans overland from Nuremberg have come
to holy Phalestine.
Nu? Penitents on hands & knees?
    Pilgrims with staff and sandals?
No....
    Tennage tourists in a SuperAutoBus
     that passes Shabat like a train autobahn opposing lane. 
We can't forget, must not forgive;
they won't admit
our German version of Original Sin --
universal inherited guilt, unexpiatable
but by grace of our whim.
These innocent children
enamoured of the frogs they killed
expect their tea and jam.

      Bet Zayit Campground, mid-August 1987
------ 
.P

ISRAEL

"Giants!" cried the spies
"relatively speaking" the Sages replied;
and to this day B'nei Israel still won't build
American-sized beds.
-----
*Surpised, the Giants
watched the spies trying to hide:
"We was fixin' them supper
what they gonna eat?"
"Maybe each other."

    Ref:  Exodus, "and we saw there giants"
    "it is a country that devours the people thereof."
------
in Israel you can trust anyone with your life
and no-one with your money
Bodies thrust forward, monely under the mattress
(Sabras; Americans conversely).
-----
I imagine ny French Dumpling
wearing white
mini-shorts & halter
entering Rehov Mea Sharim
like a jousting white knight
to confront
     those crows; those
	damned American blackbirds
	gloomy guf's      
Dark Ages from the waist down
black from pumps to top-hat
------

*Impecabbly businesslike
 the bum insists on a shekl.
Some days the best I can do 
are mitzvot ha-agarot.

    Ref:  10 agarot = 1/10 shekel = apr. $0.16
          agara (Pl. agarot), Gr., Heb.  marketplace

-----
FILO

The Lubavitcher Rebbe
confines himself to Galutz
while Hasidim duplicate his Brooklyn Townhouse
brick by brick
in the orange-fields of Philistia.

     Ref:  FILO, "First In, Last Out", accounting term
------
.p

*Lines written somewhere above Ein Gedi

Breaking a bunch of rules as usual
I'm slighly lost on the Judean Desert
sans map, hat, water, food, jacket, matches & sleep-sack
2.5 hrs daylight, 2  1200-foot trails somewhere thataway.
Unasked jeep stops, bani in back gives me
  2 oranges, 2 white-flour pitas
  and 1/3 bottle of water
  that tastes of her lipstick
until suppertime.

-----
An Arab worker said
"Welcome to my land."
Later he said,
"Welcome to my land
and yours."
-----
Alouche said
"whatever your faith,
if you feel at home here
it is your home.
But if you do not love this land
it will 'devour' you." 

    Ref.:  Tale of the Spies in Exodus
    N.B.  Alouche spoke far more beautifully than my reconstruction.

-----
.p
.p

(Autobiographical)

* 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."

----- 
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.

------
Muchado
"Much a-do About Nothing" that is...
-----
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."
-----
"Don't hoard the wine,"
my mother warned us,
"pleasures are real,
and good memories last forever."
----
.p

HOMILIES

*How to Pick Apples

If you
know where you'll be
"if the bough breaks"
& know where you'll be
if that bough breaks
then you can pick apples.

-----
Don't ask for what you don't want
or more than you need;
and if They say yes
better take it.

   Ref:  #3 I heard from the Taos hippies, who got it from 
         the Indians.  Hence, I suppose, the Indians say
         "pray [petitionary prayers] quick" 

-----
took Juanita Parker
                           grand-daughter of Qua'nit Parker
                           Germonimo's grandson, or something
down to the Rio Grande Hot Springs 
for the usual reason
Carl shows up, from Washington State
on his way up to Lama for a Meeting
and gets in the far corner.
All I remember he said was,
"Pass the soap, Ma'am."
------
"so we all sit around like dumb Indians..."

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

------
Gotta play the cards you're dealt
can always pick up a few points
or find the combo to a jackpot.
Anyhow, can't play anyone's cards but your own.
-----
For every 'No' there exists
(somewhere in the universe of possibility)
a set of bullshit words
to overcome it;
   that's Kabbalah\Gematria.
-----
.p

Old Dog Blue at the Word Processor

and Fat Larry said,
there is no problem too big
to run away from.
No challenge you can't sell out of;
no hand you can't play to win
   at least a few points;
and for every 'No' there exists
   somewhere in the universe
a set of bullshit words
to transmute it into a yes (that's Kaballah).




.p

ARS POETICUS
    
Lines written outside the Jerusalem Plaza Hotel (5-Star)

Kafka's Everyman had it easy;
a sea of well-intentioned aides
shielding an honest boss.
But pity we poor poets please
so earger to be seen
we drop each offering down a black hole
and hope a friendly shidduch catches it.

    Cf. my lost poem "Damn your tranquilizer/ now every time I try todrop a note to soul/an cherub floats by on a pink cloud/ and catches itin a gold wastebasket"

-----
x..veil feelings from truth with art.



.p
PITETIES

Sermon from the Beach at Tel Aviv

Twit Eliot today;
text:  "April..." etc.:
   Buridan's Ass Prince Flip-Flop,
   impotent center of the Treasury of Options --
 Moral - dreaming olim, Wacht Auf!

     Refs:  "When that Aprille" "is the cruelest month"
                Chaucer               Eliot
             Equidistant between 2 bales of hay,
               Buridan's donkey, unlike Balaam's
               starves to death
             Prince Hamlet, that spoiled brat
             A binary circuit is called a flip-flop
               since it's either open (flip) or not (flop)
             My poem "In search...etc."
             Text to Bach's "Wacht auf, ruft uns die Stimme"
-----
.p

"FROM WHOM CAN WE LEARN"
       (Wisdom of the Fathers)

		More wise than Wile
		who merely picked
		the epigrams of others,
		I nest my words within their names...

------
Chicano Dave says,
"If you're going to be a bear,
be a grizzly bear."
    (New Buffalo, ca. 1969)
-----
Toby the Chippewa Viet Nam Vet
gone half mad when they wiped out his platoon
said:
"G-d don't want you to be crazy.f"
he also said
"The llth Commandment is
'THOU SHALT NOT 
                 be so Gol-Durned
                                               ugly."

------   
George Robinson said,
"Take care of what HE gave you."
------
Little Joe said, "Nature is my bible."
-----
Jane said,
You can fall down
but you can't fall up."
-----
Adrian said,
to suppose you're so bad
that He don't want you
or ain't got no use for you
anymore
is colossal chutzpah 
----
Meyer said
"Yup,
sometimes in this country  it can take all day
to make 3 phone calls."
-----
Funky Bob knocked up Kvetchy and sang
"you ain't going nowhere."
-----
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."

-----
Marilyn Strauss said
"My mother says 
'If the LORD made anything baetter than sex
He kept it to Himself'
-----

Toby said,
"G-d don't want you to be crazy."
-----
Tim Leary told me
"There is nothign to be afraid of."
------
Leary came to New Buffalo.
He ignored us and said of a friend,
"He's keeping his wife happy:
that's a good yoga."
-----
Leary said, "The LSD yoga is the longest hardest yoga of all."
----
I told Susan, repeatedly, "toke more dope."
She did.
-----
Fat Larry said
"There is no problem too big
to run away from."
-----
A sailor said to Charles Koshetz
"Chuckles,
I'm gonna re-enlist
and scarf up on all them
Benefits."
-----
Justin Case:
"There has never been a fight a New Buffalo,
so don't be the first one
to get hit."
-----
Max Finstein said,
"Rick thought of a commune
as a place to hang out & smoke dope;
I talked him into starting a new world
darnit."
-----
   
Flipped out & crashed
half last summer unasked
on Menachem's patio;
since I was irredeemably evil & unemployed,
jammed his vibes & ate his coffee-cake
but prudently enquired, at reasonable intervals,
"gonna call the loony-bin catcher?"
"Hat v'shalom".

-----
the dying mathematician said to the surgeon
"cut out whatever you have to cut out
and let me go back to doing math."
           (Prof. Norman Levinison -- z'tl).
-----
said  my boss Cowboy Ed,
"your friend in the Big Whte 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 '6s5).
---------
My nephew explained to his fasther,
"Don't you understand --
when somebody wants something,
they want it right  now." 
-----
Susie Klein sang
"You've got nothing to lose"
----
Nancy hypothesized
"Men and women are differnet species."
----
Chicano Dave says,
"If you're going to be a baer,
be a grizzly bear."

       (New Buffalo, ca. 1969)
-----
Blond Larry said,
"The only rule is there are no rules
and to live here costs all you've got."
-----
Toby the Chippewa from 'Nam said
"G-d don't want you to be crazy."
-----
(Pauline Gomez said [Lama Fdnt "Be Here Now"]
"It is an honor to be asked to serve."
-----
My father said
"It is a great wrong
to have a good mind and not use it."
----
My brother said
"Boss people the way you'd like to be bossed."
-----
The naked hippy chick's old man said,
"Some day,
Steve,
you must come by and groove on our snake --
he only does one thing at a time."
-----
.p
MEDIOCRE LONGER POEMS

*from MEDIOCRE LONGER POEMS:  
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

HARPS BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON

*Babylonian Shaharit

Pausing before entering
I drape over my shoulders
and knot the imperial gartel
  yoke of bondage
about my neck & pray:
  'let my soul not see
   nor mind comprehend
   the indignities to which I subject my kishkes
   to earn my daily quiche'
Senlin says.
          
            Cambridge, Mass. autumn 1984

Ref:	Conrad Aiken, "Morning Song of Senlin":
    	"Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
    	 pale in a saffron mist and seem to die
    	 and I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
    	 stand before a glass and tie my tie."

  
-----
.p
IN HAIKU FORM
*
the ancient grape-vine
sparkling "wine of ecstacy"
crystal Kiddish cup

        Abode of the Message, 1981 (?)
-----
*
Menorahs of clay
Dreidels spin like dervishes
The light of your eyes

        Hanukah 1982 -- to Noor

-----
*
Full moon on the waves
Elul, August; August, Elul
a seagull turning

          Penobscot Bay, Maine, 1982

-----
.p
REVISIONIST AKEDA

I.  SACRIFICE

No.

Temptations from devils;
  farts and belches of your own mind:
Fattest idol can't be the Highest;
Blind obedience's fate of slaves;
Test's to hold your own ground.

	Signs & wonders -- madness'
	booby prizes.
	Distasteful battleground.

	  Angel and devil
	  the two inevitable servants
	  accompanied him.
	  An old man spoke plain sense and raised his staff;
	  cast away again, Ishmael's sickly smirk behind our backs.
	  My father's madness called down a wadi flood
	  that only madness could cross.

	The wood was heavy;
	clumsily I stumbled and fell many times, of course
	and that damnable fire would not go out.

A HAND blocks the Place
as he pressed forward, through his whirlwind --

	unable to move
	and my father suddenly so small
	soul surged through opening heavens
	and say, the say, "The Awe of Issac"
	handing my life back to me, as grace

my Mother had become a ram, nestling in the PALM.


	As the silver knife dropped to earth
	his strength passed to me as a robe.

	Whole, in the peaceful cool of the day
	we did not speak again,
	and went to separate Sabbaths. 

She returned just once, to show me, afar
a strong slender girl descending in golden light
I suppose to return laughter to my soul.
Living under my mother's peace
we laugh with each other in the Light of our Lord.


.p
II.  SANCTIFY

Redeemed but bedazzled at last by Light
		(our Lord is magnanimous
		 we shall feast on savory stew)
time to sanctify, at least, my own first-born
whose birthright is to santify that Place
to redeem our mistakes.
No sharp tools; not burning flesh
but sanctified laughter of men and women shall ascend
like incense, like music.


III.

I dream of a Temple of peace
just piled-up field-stones, each chosen in love
nothing to envy
where the poor man, at home, may dip his bread in salt
shaded by ancient olive trees.


                         Pesach 5744 --
                         Sukkot 5755
                              Belmont, Mass.
.p
l3
                                           
"A quiet man, living in tents"

	"...nor could I have known
	    whose heel I grasped, my brother's or my own."
			Delmore Schwartz, "Jacob"


from a far field
my father's shadow in afternoon
reflected mountain in a lake

gain waving in the wind
and the Age of Abel passing
	one dreams, occasionallly --
	to raise up bikkurim....

laughing off this birth-right
my brother races to forests
fleet as a wolf

 ...on the stove
 stew of the fruits of the earth
 drying herbs, chorus of greens

a wild brother in animal skins
shussed down the dry mountainside, tumbling stones
threw himself on the goats' watering trough
drank like a great cat
and burst through my door

he ate without pause
(I dared one demand)
laughed it off again
and left to his wives.
He tolerates me.
we parted friends.


That day, my father dying
my mother moved calmly, postponing her grief
as if she were heir to his peace
steering my destiny through that fateful, labored masquerade
		wheelbarrow in a rutted field...

my brother a man of laughter and rage
(virus forte et __________[Lat.=simple])
wrapped in a field-hand's cloak
     one of my brother's rabbits now
mocked by that stolen blessing
			JACKPOT JAKE HITS THE TRAIL
			WITH THE FAMILY JEWELS
always listening, shema, shema
hoping only for reluctant shelter
in my mother's land


	I know livestock.  That helps.

  ....
  our son, our son at last
  his dreams recalling me to the truth of my own...

.p
Belatedly the Butler recalled his omission;
the tzaddik bathed and was raised
up from the prayers of poverty
"...but it is easy to forget, at our ease"

	Ref:  after a teaching by John Gomez, Taos
		 Cf. Heraclitus, Fr. Bywater 108

-----
.p
Two Poems under the influence of Carl Shrager's Panama Red

Miraculously, the water parted
they passed through to Mt. Zion.
To one
   (he to whom the God once spoke
   in the silence in the heart of the fire in the veins of a bush)
the God spoke again
and the WORD
		   of infinite delicate complexity
                                             was revealed as LAW
Blinded he returned
to seal his mountain-top tomb with the shattered calf.
It was hewn on stone tablets.

		Mendocino, 1967.
			to Susan Harrison

-----
.p
Prophet followed by Men in White Suits

Such callers don't leave cards,
and retrospective distinction
after life in the hell of interminable equivocation
seemed an imprudent investment.

Fighting the waves of my mind
("keep it under yoour hat, Gyro Gearloose")
"I went down to -- 
                     Pireus", Joffa, 
                                     "Hell, Tarshish!"
                                   (thank heaven for money)
skulking about friends
who said I appeared a bit preoccupied

and bulled my onto a boat.
	...with my back to the wall of a courtyard cafe
	at the edge of the world, where the air is clear and calm...

and the rise & fall of the hull
(get some sleep, get some sleep)
confirmed my mistake

Tchuve, tchuve, wailed the wind
	the sin we all dwell in is no ground for guilt
	yes, yes, repent all your vicious little excesses of despair  	but turn, "return to the land of your soul"

One must pretend as long as possible that nothing's happening
	sling the bull with the tars
	rest in the shade of atheism
		damnit, goodness strong as oars pushing on heavy swells
instant taslick, they cast me away
taslick, the waves tossed me back on shore

"That looks like Jonah,
 and he looks like fish-puke."
 Been on a bender buddy?"

To damned mad at last
for conscientious objection
"any way the wind blows", I went where it wanted
("to the hookers who move in mysterious ways, boy")
trying to at least not look the part
(thank heaven for clean clothes and money.)      
walked 3 days through that beige metropolis
and went through the motions.
They listened with the indifferent courtesy of the rich
and declared  another festival of despair
Naturally nothing happened.
.p

Glutted with godly melodrama and popular farce
I chose to die with simple dignity.
A lady older than my anscesters
brought me under her arbor.
Succot passes, vines die
and nothing works out.
Gradually the voices dropped out and gave me my mind back
terribly bored again,
the stakes dropped back to my usual penny-ante,
but this time I was broke for real.
There was no point, any longer, in not going home.
-----
.p

taxicab home from the Seder
interrupts the flight from Egypt
"tchuve, tchuve," robins sing.

          Boston, 1983

----- 
.p

LEFTOVERS

Pa- and Ma- -familias 
can straighten everything out
in anyone else's house.

-----
That 
stray cat
that
(admittedly, it's starving)
jumps
onto the table to steal my cheese
ignored my charitable bread.
-----
*Occasionally to sketch in a few clear strokes some minor usefulact...
-----
Too embarassed to pick off his lice
he hits 'em with a hammer
too embarassed to admit it
he extends the favor to everyojhe:
the born-again miniature man.
-----
After a bit it becomes too facile:  shaking out assonant linesspiced with well-bred Weltshmerz.
-----
*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

-----
Gems, I'm told
hold it
within poker-faced facades --
-- an irrepressible exhuberance of light --
Inherited trash makes opaque walls
hard to polish.
-----
Aspects of the American Way:  Capital Punishment

Perhaps it
- 'exquisite obscenity'? -- 'catastrophic irrelevance'?
's encapsulateable
in ("another demned") poem:
with attentive indifference
to put another
raging with "lust for life"
or humbled as an old cow
to death....

       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.


[[nb - try this with just & fr I& center commands -- new form]]

-----
.p

----
One is indispensable only insofar as they are too dumb to realizeit.
----
Thrysamachus and his impeccalbe revenge again:
duly repaying favors,
but happily shafting anyone
who happends to step on his toes.
-----
*an old man walks to the corner
fighting harder than a mountain-climber
each mitzvah a peak.
-----    
l1

Look like you ain't worth eating
walk softly
think with your feet
look ahead
listen behind
act dumb but
in case of potential danger
immediately accelerate, detour around it quick, and revert invisible
except if they intercept you
act chickenshit
until you can zip through a window
l'hitraot.            
------



.p

SELECTIONS FROM A BRIEF HISTORY OF MODERN ANGLO-AMERICAN POETRY

Our Mr. Stevens or the Wizard of Oz
first-class mountebank
from hs home here in Hartford
manufactures fables for fairy-tale kingdoms --
clothed in such beauty, so little substance.

-----
Grmpy harumphing Uncle Ez
lost and muttering in the forest of his beard
wherein he's squirreled away
all the sweets from our libraries...

-----
Confessedly crabby snappy & sidling, albeit
more like the slimy squid be-wreathed in inky pleas
the Reverent Mr. Prufrock
tugging at his waistco't
fain to sink by his own bootstraps 'neath deepest seas
and flee (a meni meni madrigal) his abdominal Accuser
Sanctuary! Schoolboy Sunday School (oh viable mirage!)
he slams the door, embraces altar (alter, altered) horns
released, arises, turns
adjusts his tie and blames the Jews.

-----
Consider, Sabras,
the tragedies of Schwartz and Pound:
the "glass of fashion" shattered
mad Lear's blind  Gloucester groping his way
with immaculate taste
to the only appropriate sound stage remaining,
"Desolation Row"
"Caution -- I brake for Delmore Schwartz."
And Bellow's Polonious usurps Horatio's tale.

Remember kindly too
that Master-singer Idaho mockingbird
(too dam' dumb to be a jackass)
battering Canto's against an Emperor's cage.

but mock ye may El'iot, that
superficical facile Anglophile
hicktown bigot

	Refs:
    	   Almost any of Schwartz poems, e.g. "Vivaldi";
	   Hamlet, Lear, Bob Dylan song, Saul Bellow's ripoff,
		Pound's last interview in the NY Times Mag,
	     disavowing "that stupid, provincial vice of anti-
	     Semetism", 
		T.S.Eliot of St. Louis wrote, in "Bleinstein with a Baedecker","...Chicago Semite Viennese".
                                                     

 