;.cRetype of Selected Poems 4/89--5/92
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l7,10,109,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
=mopo8992
Retype of Selected Poems 4/89--5/92
Input =sopo8992  25.351K 9/06/92  ie 9 June 92

Titles included:  Matisse cuts paper dollies
        "Here is an agreeable old scare-crow"  Lost input =oldcrow
=================================================================
.p

Flying to my home
mourning a lost love                          
consoled by the stars

       Forget niether how your souls loved
       nor that her heart has left you.


                                       Dec. 4, 1984, El Al 
                                       (rev. 1989)

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

With what reticence she visited her grandchildren
the light, then, of her life.

                                       (ASA)

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

The gold-winged blackbirds
stopped last fall in England
to call me home.

                             Ein Gedi
                             December 20, 1991

------------------------------------------------------------------
l7
#l7 LL=110

gale wind over teh Dead Sea
spasms of rin driven out of darkness like sand
100 children banging doors
flickering static hurls news of politicized TV peace from Bethlehem
Signs of a stormy birth for the new year.

Moring light:  8 Zede Yaelim
               walk across the wadi
               toward the salt-choked sea


                                          Ein Gedi Youth Hostel
                                          24-25.12.91

{Comment (sa):  Even Homer sometimes nods.}

------------------------------------------------------------------
l1
#l1 Resume Normal layout LL=65

Leila:
Black streets, cold rain
driven by a howling wind.
    "Everyone pauses, draming of peace" says Shlomo
     they tell us, waiting outside.

Mincha time:  snow settling like doves on orange trees
              and the Old City walls.

                                            Jerusalem
                                            31.12.91--01.01.92

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

Resented for 50 years
your refusal to negotiate,
Time, but know now
relief at leaving
done deeds behind.

                      Harwich--Hamburg Ferry
                      Winter Solstice, 1990

------------------------------------------------------------------
l7
#l7 LL=110

Our Italian Catholic suburban neighbor's hildren once "did the job"
with a brand new remote-control-operated electric garage door
on our middle-aged spayed cat.
My mother asked, "Why would anyone want to kill a poor old shlump like that?"

                                                         January 21, 1991  

------------------------------------------------------------------
l1
#l1 Resume standard layout LL=65

*
Came back to the farm flipped out but found
the crested wheat grass in drilled in last summer
had become a pasture.

                           (of New Buffalo, apr. 1974)

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

Grant 'honest Iago' that "inky cloak" of literate artifice.
                     (The baboon wore white upon his sleeve
                      clutching the            hummingbird.)

        So pity poseurs; respect affectation:
        if angels fail
        they fall and fizzle
        out like meteorites; we
              though, can't
              quit, have to
        shamble on posing as bagmen with bundles of guilt.

------------------------------------------------------------------
                       
The Snake, Iago, played fair
the taste was exquisite
    as evanescence
though the cold after-glow
lonely as omniscience.

                                 (1992, outside London)
------------------------------------------------------------------

*
No blame, only loss
of something unidentified.
Nothing changed.  The 'Angel with [ a ] Flaming Sword'
could await discreetly an improbable crisis. 
Reaching toward each other they savor particulars
of a new, unwanted world.
      
                                  (1991, Hamburg)
-----------------------------

Similarly:

rec:

and after they
oh, 'ate an apple' if you will

?
felt desire arise as grace

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

The Poet as Youth Contemplates his Virginity

Once push came to shove
and grunt to groan
the halos, thank heaven, fell off

                                   (ca. 1959)

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

Ed Clark said,
Comes the  Revolution
Todd Gitlin will be under the bed
with the rest of us.

         SPU house, E. 7th St. NYC  ca. 1965

{Poet's note:  Todd Gitlin, nowadays a rather stodgy Princetonprofessor or some such, was then a rather stodgy New Leftactivist.

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

*
After so much rain
a warm winter's day -- 
hastily I sit in the sun
trying not to alarm it.  

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

Thrown out of his hovel
the pottering old man arranges the kitchen
of his hosts.

                            Mevo Modi'in, 20.12.91

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

Stumblebum in the sun
coughing and farting and drying his toes.
     "That's one happy nigger."

         Poor old Bucket o' Guts:
         Did you really expect
         a marble laurel wreath?

                16.12.91, Modi'in

------------------------------------------------------------------
[ Lazy Eulogy ]                                      

Before I'd washed the clothes
worn to our visit
they'd taken you away.

                             28.04.92
-------------------------------------

ENVOI

Rinata's in
the looney bin

again.
                             Spring 1991 [ Rev. 1992 ]
------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

Today they are burying
two persons whom I did not know were dead
nor had lived.

                            Israel, May 4, 1989

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

**Four Star Night**

Sasson the Mad Russian
's wife says
they're out
on the street
but
not quite down
in the gutter;
last night they slept
in the Kings' Hotel.

                            (Cf. Catullus)

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

Like a cat awaiting grace
from the refrigerator
I sit on the walk-way mall
before a Magic Money Machine
marked 'Closed'.

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

The elderly proprieter
of Bet HaNeshek
displays Chinese vases
as if to say,
though my wares my shatter skulls    [although my wares ... ]
these, at least, are precious.

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

Descending 
from the Central Station
to Tiberias
one is welcomed by the goddess of the waters
astride a magazine cover.

                          :Cornocopia

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

          "Why have you come so far to see what you should be?"
                                 Himalayan Rishi, quoted by PVK

Seeking their Jesus of Finland
the shlep like sheep from hotel to motorboat
and pause, midway between Ein Gev and Tiberias
to sing of warm alpine rooms on a soft snowy day
thinking it of Him.
Flying to tomorrow's news
2 F-16's {crash past}           [ Two F-16's ]
Ashore, air soft and warm as a patchwork quilt
the pastor goes up to an old Arab
casting from fluttering eucalyptus to rippling water
and shows him a salmon lure
from mountain streams.

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

[Cf. rec:

Jesus left here long ago
despite what Bibles tell as so
    
    Japanese know.

In a convoy of cormorants
none named Hamlet.
                                      
                                      Kibbutz HaOn
                                      25 December  (1997(?))

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                            
Sitting by the swimming pool
I glance up at the West Bank
village on the opposite hillside.

                                      (Makabim, 21.04.92)

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

.p

"Israel agrees with you."
"Because I agree with it
overall."

{Note (sa):  Some apercus just ain't born to be poems.}

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

In winter
Israel's ski-run
is usually closed
due to snow.

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

News Item {by Andy Court from the } Jerusalem Post Pesach Edition

In Katmandu in '88
ba'al tchuva at a Seder say [ said ]
     "This can't, man, do -- know
      where you're at, baby:
      call the Rebbe."
In '89, beneath the sign
of a bakery {on the} way of the Elephant-god
came a carton of kippot with
airo-mailed matza (baked in great haste)
and a hundred tons of gefillte fish
with two 20-year-olds in coat-and-tails
flown all the way from Australia.

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

Cf. also, rec:

Two million years are but a blink
or so the duly doti think

It started with a single WORD
(a bigger Bang was never heard)

the seas swarmed with gefillte fish

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

Oh, shomer mitzvot mayonaise -- today's
fast I
unintentionally betake from thee.

                                       10 Tevet, C.E. 1990]

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

.p

Cf. also (copied elsewhere):

so pity the Egged egg
I ate, I thought, for breakfast;
all day it demanded
additional recognition.

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

and the drunk on Jaffa Road
spake unto the autobus exhaust
      saying

          been sittin' here since '48
          nobody sees me
          might's well go back home

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

     Haman had,
     at least,
     excellent
     ears ...

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

& on the 8th Day Man said
it was good
for a start
but
Let there be brighter lights
electric birds
imaginary foods
and fire-waters.
You rest; we'll boogie --
Yalla, Chava.

                       Tiberias, Motzi Shabbat, 31.05.92, 00:30

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

The Emperor of Ice Cream Shall Return"

"Hi --
 Last time we met
 you spoke of Jeshua.
 He's Messiah."
"What's Messiah?"
"Next time we meet
 the oldest buys ice-cream
 for everyone --
'Bye."

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

News Item, Decembear 1991

The complete Buddhist scriptues
once written on palm leaves
will now be inscribed
with concentrated light
on a CD-ROM tree.

------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================

TALES OF NEW BUFFALO

Cave Dave found Jesus
and called the cops
on himself.
He went back to jail in Chicago
and changed his mind again
so we all sat down
while Telus tried to pray him out
and I called for help
on a phony [ telephone ] credit card.
In the morning Telus said
"Ain't easy."
Next day Cave Dave got sprung
hitched all the way back to Hondo
and let himself out of his last ride
through the windshield.    *

     *That was a true story; Dave was badly scarred, but eeryonelooked weird in those days so nobody noticed much.
Cave Dave says:  If you don't pray from the heart
                 ain't no way He can hear you.


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

MORE TALES OF MODI'IN

Reggae Tune

Eliahu got no shoes
     Nu -- he
Jet-Set it to Italy
maybe  
       to bring us back currency.

------------------------------------------------
                  
"You ain't talked to me in 11 years
 and today all you said was,
 'Don't talk to Leon.'"

                            (Atty Wm. Richman, Esq.)

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

Can do
        everything
in half the time
includig shmira.

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

"But," said Billy
     "Shlomo told me,
      'Go fly a kite.'"
"ASSUR!" said the POLICE CHIEF
         for fear
you'd snaggle a cable
completing a circuit
*** COWS DEFEND US *** "

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

The Maggid of Modi'in said,'
"In the name of the Wife of Meesh-Meesh
 'Assur to know
  on one foot;
  might lead
  to fox-trot & what not.'"

{Note:  Some euphemisms just don't do it; what Tia said was: Assur to have sex standing up here; might lead to mixed dancing.}

------------------------------------------------------------------
     
     'Oh Pious Ones'
      how continually you invoke, how rarely attend
      wishes of heavens.
                                        (Cf. Rumi)
------------------------------------------------------------------

Today we went out to the shooting range
to learn to shoot
3 shots apiece
so we can all carry guns
but it was raining very hard
and so somebody asked the Rabbi
and he said we could all go home
so we all went home and the sun came out.
We will go back out to the shooting range
next year
if heavens permit it.

                                         27.12.91

------------------------------------------------------------------
                                
We have a new Rabash.
Every night he gets up
& puts on a real Uzi
and picks up a big new flashlight
and wakes up the Shomer
who gets to carry a nice old wood rifele
who wakes up the guard-of-the-night
who goes over to Leon
and gives Leon 30 shekels to take his place
and goes  back to sleep
and then  the Rabash goes back to sleep
and then  the Shomer goes home
and then  Leon goes  back home to sleep.

     So every night
     Leon guards us all night long
     but nobody gives him a gun
     or a flashlight
     or a key to unlock the gate
     or a smile.

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

Portrait of the Poet by the Lawyer for a 4-year-old

"He came from way up there
 and his mind moves so fast
 you can't even see the wheels spin."

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

Everyone's exasperated past words
at someone.
Constellation of black holes.

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

'Distance'd, all but 'cut off'
I am welcomed at the House of Prayer
by an open-hearted dog.

------------------------------------------------
                                 
Sunsets shut up in her soul
flash out as lightening
who longed to build lovely worlds.

------------------------------------------------------------------
           
'See much, say little.'
Wiry as Jacob, striding stones
to shelter and raise a family on sun-scourged land.

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

Sight clear as daybreak
freely she came to our tents
where men fenced her in.

                                (ALS)

   Note:  'As clear and passionate as the dawn, said old Yeats.
	     Daybreak is clear; dawn passionate.

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

Cf. also Satires from UCSB, ca. 1969:

Between our worlds you walk, Euridicye
and men fear to touch you.
                                 
-----------------------------------------------------

Honest Ulysses, cast ashore
wonders:
What are all the plastic people
laughing for?

(Paul Wienpahl)                  

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

It is an error to ignore the terrier
whose silent eyes but make his bark the scarier.

(Alexander Sesonske, Department Chairman)

------------------------------------------------------------------
.p
                                     
HOFSHI bonds like a free radical.
The Modi'in Chief of Police
reclassifies her ass.

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

"The only difference is,
 we're all crazy
 and know it
 and you're crazy
 and don't know it
 yet."

                   (after Bob Werz, z'lb, New Buffalo, ca. 1969)

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

For four years Roy
lived like a perfect English country gentleman may
in a little 2-room cottage
with his 3 big Doberman watchdogs
in his little 2-room cottage.
On day Hai asked,
"Is that normal?"

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

Today Roy graded his lawn
Like a helicopter landing pad.
He stays here to guard us
from 'weirdos'.

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

My neighbor the commando
slips out in midnight dark
to untie a blue line
from my puppy.

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

Adon Katsefet

"14 years
 been shootin'
 Arabs
 and now they won't give me a gun.
 Some folks are on a power trip."
                                           
{N.B.:  My mastery of contemporary Hebrew remains imperfect;
I'm not sure I meant, bly 'katsefet', whipped cream or half-bakedbread dough.)
------------------------------------------------------------------

Lady with a tied-down mind
keeps her man and dog on short lead;
someday maybe they all run 'way.

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

Woodsmoke on the summer wind
Lest the Moshav burn
I'll print out these poems now.

                                     May 4, 1992,  12:42 P.M.

{Notes: 
Note that the above is in 'anti-Haiku' (7--5--7) form.
By 'P.M.' I presumably meant:  past midnight.
A `printer' was an output device in common use before theinvention of E-mail.}

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

HOW TO DO 

To play football like a gentleman
don't ignore the sidelines
nor tackle the spectators.

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

How to Play Baseball

Don't swing
before they pitch.

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

How to Play Basketball

If someone's closer
pass;
if you're closest
shoot.

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

How to Go Hiking

If you've lost the trail
go back to where you were
when you were on the trail.

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

Can make an apple pie
with any apples;
cut around the spoiled spots.

------------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================

"It would be a mistake
 to take me for granted,"
 she said.  I forget who.

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

I ride the rails as beige arrays
of foliage float by, and toast
with tea displays of Jersey cows
that jet-stream past me, relatively.

                                (Deutschebahn, 1991)

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

fumbling and losing things -- pieces of
teeth mind and memoryo
I am only surprised that age arrived
before I grew up.

------------------------------------------------------------------
                
The Arc de Triomphe
lonley as de Gualle
stands encircled 
by a swirling moat
of endlessly encircling
autos.

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

How Paris celebrates
each house where every poet died
of its high prices.

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

& President Ford V-8
        spake
in a great blaring of horns
unto humanity, saying:
We Rule, worms:
go Underground.

                                 (Paris, 12/90)

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

The sun scuttles across the gry sky
like a hedgehog crossing a snow-lined road.

                                (England, Dec. 11, 1990)

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

MORE METAPOEMS

but a mind is always a volatile thing
shy as a cat and apt
to run away when things get noisy ...

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

Slipping into sleep
pick pieces of my puzzle
in a language I forget

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

Pick & catch one cloud that blew through the mind

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

Frying bacon, honing poems --
trim off the fat.

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

While I guarded the tavern
the bandits bought me drink
and stole my poem.

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

It was reported in The Jerusalem Post
that a diplomoat has siad,
"One must see many cities
to collect a single poem."

       Zhlop'd in the sun
       I remember my bookshelves.

                                       :"Treasure in heaven"

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

The echo of silence
from an exclamation point
used by Pound.

                  Ref:  Pound, Imitations from the Chinese
                        "The River Merchant's Wife:  A Letter"

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

One tries to pick words that fit the thought.

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

Leaving, the bandits dropped my poems
back {into my in-basket} [on my doorsill]
from their smoke-rings.

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

Visit of a Minor Muse

"Sorry to get you up.
 Do you still need the bed?"

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

Ok; here's the key to what I'm writing nowadays


Old men talk simply
sipping water after meals;
say, Klee's farewell paintings
or even Yeats
savoring irnies;
retiring bodies
pottering on
as spirit soars.

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

I came
entangling in the telling but intending
to say
more than this

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

POEMS TO CLAUDIA

sigh of a thunderstorm
fluttering wings of a { dove }
red fox lopes through the grass 

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

soft wind, summer clouds
rumble of a thunderstorm
red fox running home

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

Watched by cows and mule
I stumble down from the pass.
soft bells in the rain

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

One day a poor student met a comely young woman of Moab, andfollowed her home.  Then he remembered his duties and spurned her. Quite a bit later, when he came to the rainbow bridge to thepearl-light gates of heaven, he found, as expected, a great sagerobed in a long tallit waiting to greet him.  'Did you really notrecognize me?' asked the Moabitess.                       

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

There was, and always will be, a Princess, from the lands ofcloud-colored light, who chose to see the lands below, anddescended like a red-and-orange flame, until she came to a landwhere she learned to ride the winds like a fast-fleeing stormcloud.  
Then she chose to descend further, to a land where she learned theways of Wisdom, and there with her mind she wrestled joyously withothers who climbed in those heights.  
And then, with a deep breath, she descended to the lowest butrichest place, where her feet found rest on rock and earth, and[there she] looked about for others who had made that journey.
But the sky was grey with reain, and cold winds blew, and oftenthe air was full of harsh noises, and travelers often becameconfused and forgot what they had come to do.
And so of course one day a poor student, who dressed in cast-offclothing and looked about with a frightened air, walked across herpath and said, 'We met once in another land, where the air is notso filled with noises -- I can take you back to visit there, Ithink.'
But he looked and acted so strangely that she did not believe him.

--------------
Refs:  (1) Cf. Kitov, Book of our Heritage, on Book of Ruth
(2)  After my passing glance & glimpse of the schematism of HIK
.p

CHAGRIN D'AMOUR

Lovers in the Morning

"before recalling who
 you ask me how
 I am"

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

"Belied yourself
 only; I
 was, as you'd put it,
 'true'."     "And you
set to rout     merely
our   ration  of time."

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

"The best-laid plens of mice and men"
derive, as in Of Mice and Men,

I've no-one now to show this to.

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

I gave my love three wishes.
She bade me wash the dishes.

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

             "Hine ecquitavit"

Friday night again
wonder where my woman gone.

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

                             "but our love's all written down
                              like a song too often sung ..."
                                              Shrager, ca. '65

of an angel soul in a monkey mind
and a body like strawberry cheescake
mane of a red wild horse
in chains to a brewery cart,
Oh -----
          horeshit:  Claudia
          why must you be so mean, baby
          do what you do do did it
          like your mama said bad baby ... 

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


Fragments from an unwritten autobiographic poem, Hamburg 1991


and I shambled about like a curious camel

who floated up trails like a red-maned horse

she had answers for everything
all of them wrong        

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

"I love you ture
but you must part
for dropping bread-crumbs on the car-
pet; yet we'll meet again some day,
if that's what my housemates say."

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

"garlic"
                       "Darling..."
"Not darling, garlic." 

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

George Bernard Shaw, a bachelor
romanticized such liasons
as 'maximized chance of accepted advances' ...

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

"My housemate's cast-off room-mate sat
therein and watched TV all day
and in and out you do it to
my CPUnit VDT."

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

BAGATELLES

Cats nap
where whim of the wave of the day betake them ...
even in Egypt, posing as deities
still, they
eschewed formality;
'the cat's pyjamas', then, were merely
hyperbole.

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

"Lovers in the boudoir
 must not clash
 with my potted plants.'

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

"Steve  I just lost another
 Steve; one            must
 really be more care-
 -ful with her
 possessions."

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

That spayed cat, Madam,
ate your decaffinated tea.

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

"I'll love you          dear
'till Mountains turn to tears
   and fall."  She said,
"That's all?
 "Know Sir that then
  the Valleys    run
  in soft-banked streams
  and greenly swwells the rolling hill with burgeoning
  that fallen mountains yet yield gold to succor
  buckaroo, so hold your'orse and pay our Traiff
  'ere I call my paw the SherifF."    

=================================================================
.p

NOTES FROM HAMBURG

Amusing a modern woman
by my ocvered head
I pass theDammtor Plaza
and glance down at a bronze plaque.

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

In deepest sympathy
2 Hamburg policemen
& 6 citizens
contemplate a wounded swan

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

In the first-class Hamburger subway coach
a genteman sits
beside an attache case
stuffed with chocolate.

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

                                "this people mild politely smiled"
                                Gilbert & Sullivan, Iolanthe(?)

The Great Synagogue of Hamburg remains
only as a black-&-white photo
the bimah glimpsed
behind a smirking factory worker.

     Today we may fast or go to the Opera;
     for the villains have passed
     in a Cheshire cat's ass.

                                      November 8, 1990*
                                      Hamburg--Holland train

                * November 9, 1938, was "Kristalolnacht";

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

Peacefully, aimlessly as snowflakes
Germans on holiday drift over teh frozen Ulster
as if nothing had changed
from those days, centuries ago, of the Dutch masters.
Now here's a man in ten thousand
souring their joy the best he can   [as best he can ]
who says the world will come to end,
as well it may, though not, I think, today.   [ though not today ]

                          2/17/91

{N.B.:  This was written several days before the start of GeorgeBush's Gulf War I.  At that time, one was rather apprehensive ofits possible consequences, expendably for Israel if not the USA. 
Shortly thereafter I ran away, and was on deck of a boat toHarwich, in a stormy night, when it ended, erev Purim; I thenwound up apparently indigent roamimg the tow-paths of Englanduntil Sukkot.}

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

                COLLECTED CHICKEN-KICKING POEMS                                    
                          3-if Poem

If 
      thoughts   cld                               kill
if    that       cat             had
                                      9      lives
      & each                                 live
                 cat             had  9      lives
      he'd                                         still
      be                                           dead.

=================================================================
END =mopo8992   Modified 6 July 03
=================================================================





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


        


