;.cCollected Poems, 7/92--1/93
;.l1,3,63,66,1,0,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l2,3,78,192,2,15,20,25,127,3,1,
;.l3,2,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,2,0,
;.l7,5,100,192,2,15,20,25,127,5,2,
PO0193


"Journey's Jargon": Collected Poems  7/92--1/93
Precipitated at the intersection of debacle and reverie and typed
by Steve Amdur at HaOn, 15170 Israel.




                        "May I for my soul's sake reckon
                         journey's jargon..."

                  Pound, imitation of Anglo-Saxon Seafarer's Song

			




































       


.p

E'er we'd 'wayed anchor
Norseman coughed down my door
Over the Cyprus Sea
Under the dark of the moon
A bulbo stole my house
Long before landfall


     Ref:  bulbo (Hebrew):  fat raucus black-&-grey bird

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

Contemporary Pilgrim

Seen off only by my usual dragons
I rue last evening's brandy and cigar.
Mind bobs on sleep-reft seas
Red dawn behind the cliffs of Turkey.
Soul returns to bid me boker tov:
"See, those are only the `scolding rocks'
 that your nemesis, Eliot, prophecied,
 and your dragons can keep in a poem today."

                           
              Refs:  boker tov = good morning (colloquial Hebrew)
                     Siddur:  "...restored my soul to me" 
                     T.S. Eliot,  The Cocktail Party

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

			"there was a time that always is
                when your tears were in my eyes.
                Well it's gone, gone,
                baby and the world goes on."
                                         
                                     Carl Shrager, ca. '65

Pick what you wil
it's trivial
(as day or way of dying)
what images our ending.
		See for a fee how a screenwriter may
          for a few frames' change
          offer on either hand
          rejouicance or tragedy
               and undone in water, was the fire's beauty
               revoked by retroactive definition?


                                      Camp Zenith, 7/92

		Ref:  rejouicance:  Cf. in Bach's ___th English? suite


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

Dock at the last port.
Stow the sails,
nostalgia for the open ocean
can wait.

                               Camp Zenith, Monday 16.08.92

-----------------------------------
l1

grey mist, freezing rain
the bright blast of rock-'n-roll
from the mountain house

                                Kleine Scheidig, 31.08.92

----------------------------------------------
.p
L1
.p

Lines written in guest books:


below cloud-veiled peaks
steamer on an azure lake
storybook hotel

      vanquishing space, we have lost time
      so recall (not perverse luxury of inequity but)
                 oh -- `dimensional continuity'
      choose with compassionate discrimination
      those romance of memoires and history
      toward which you steer.

                                   
                               Grandhotel Giessbach, 30.08.92

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

I'm writing from the isle of Tinos where
I've rather unexpectedly `debarked'
(if one still calls it that; in fact quite weary
 from two nights on a double-diesel ferry
 said vessel having taken leave while I
 was still a couple furlongs from the quay)
and finding by the gods own luck a place
that still holds a bit of that fleeting Attic grace.
                                  

                                 (Tinos, 07.07.92)
                                 (after Auden's "Letter to Byron")

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

.p

l7
Japanese in Summer Dress on the Jungfraujoch

	imagine
			(should you so incline)
			a civilization contrived
                                        of filagree
                                                     of whimsy
                                       
                                    constructs of complementary savourings
                                                                           of peculiarities
                      
                        (oh -- Hokusai's rice-paper parosols
                               captured in motionless agitation)
                      
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

l1

on an immaculate snowfield
2 stout Englishmen
pose with peckers

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

bric-a-brac in a glass case
cows in a field
     viewed from a passing train:
          forgive and forget us
          who never knew nor wish to now

------------------------------------------------
.p
l1
LINES WRITTEN, IN RETROSPECT, PRIOR TO A BRIEF BREAKDOWN

l2

Primitive religious rites:

               "it is death for souls to become water"
                                     Herakllitus, Fr. ______

4 hunters
voice and gestures yet wet from bloodlust
4 souls
gaze sadly from the garage wall

              majesty & grance running free across mountain peaks
              how better to possess it
                  than clamber into a 4 x 4 Wheel Drive Jeep
and blast the horny bastard in the breast with my brand new 30-ought-six

                                                   Campra 9/92
       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

prerequisites for presidents
l7
              "Mr. Clinton from the start of his  campaign sought
               to undercut Democratic liabilities on values  iss-
               ues. He has stressed his commitment to a relative-
               ly tough welfare-workfare policy,        exercised
               the death penalty as governor of Arkansas and ..."
l2
                   International New York Herald Tribune,      8/29/92
                   Seeking a Moral Tone, the the President Homes [sic]
                   in on `Family Values'

l3
.a2
                     
Reckon Old Brown's gone down
to's grave by now
who'd not save
Chessman from the cyanide
for fear 'twere political
suicide 

------------------------------------------
.P

One last sip of shnapps and I
retire to my bed.
Soon as it's quiet
night shift comes on
continuing its confidential agenda.
I negotiate morning:
	Shit:  bit of a mess you've left me
	my frantic fellows.

                                     Campra, 19.09.92

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

baffled Knight 
stammering excuses to St. George
	in the shaow of that radiant gate
bedazzled by dragons' magic
who could not see so did not slay
fated foe
in metamorphosis

                                    Camperio, 20.09.92
----------------------------------------------

soi-disant crediteurs
ses mauvais reves demandent mon bon jour:
                                           Sphinx
                                           stinks
                                                  untangle my names
                                                  or stay before daybreak


and I a
fuss-budget rushing about
                            my biography
trying to fit happy endings onto
oh
                                                  everything

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

protagonists manouvering
to put flattering parts
in exemplary plots
with upbeat endings.

-------------------
.p
Again on circumcision:

Dam'you Rousseau, 'tain't so
(hitch is it itches says Freud).
            
                  Awakening, the lion may
                  forget the Peaceable Kingdom
                  and, absent-mindedly,
                  have your lady to lunch.

-------------------------------           
Conquistodore of the Ball-Point Pen
planting the Standard of Rationality
in uncharted swamps.

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

On the Phenomenology of Pilgrim's Regress

Reb Nachman is climbing, turn by turn
back up from the dark damp wadi
Rumi, dancing over cliffs
hides behind trees.

Ref:  wadi (Is. Arabic) = (Spanish) arroyo
      streambed, usually dry
      
      Bunyan, "Pilgrim's Progress", of which I have often read the title
       I have bumped into no-one as acute as Reb Nachman in detailing the         phenomenology of a spiritual/psychologic breakdown/recovery.

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

With what sense of achievement
I deposit something
in the trash:
	what I was, unwanted, given
	have I used to the full
	best's I could.

-------------------------------- 
Poetic Will

If I'd be better off dead
let me go
& transplant the leftovers
to spit in the devil's eye.

                                (Val Blenio, 10/92)
l7
  The above really does represent my consistent "living will", as expressed in duly registered     forms (Mass. Registry of Motor Vehicles, Belinson Hospital Petah Tikva).

     ----------------------------------------------------------------
l1
.a2
Epilogue

Having put me foot in a bit of it again,
I disown my shoe
                                   Rhodos 24.09.92
------------------------------------------

.p
LAKESIDE LYRICS

Cornocopia for Yekkes

Descending fron the Central Bus Station
at Tiberias
one is welcomed by the goddess of the waters
astride a magazine cover.
l7
                            
   Ref:  Yekkes = (colloqu. Is.) German-Jewish immigrants from the '30's, 
         unaccustomed publically to appear less informally than in a so-called "sports" jacket
l1

------------------------------------------------------
          
and on the 8th day man said
it was good 
for a start 
but
let there be 
              electric birds
              stars in the trees
              & waterproof dirt.
You rest; we'll boogie: 
y'allah, Chava.                 

                        Ref:  y'alla = (Israeli slang), let's go
                              Chava =  (Biblical Hebrew.) Eve

------------------------
                                                               
Six-foot plus
Burger Ranch boss
pistol packed
upside's backside.
                              
                    (Tiberias, 11/92)
--------------------------------------
DHL Microdot

He walked upon these waters
who'd never had the chance
to do on board a Disco-cruise
the boogie-woogie dance.

                           (Tiberias. 11/11/92)
------------------------------------------ 
Synchronicity 2

Just as a chick
in a Cadillac black blouse
strode past my Cafe
Beethoven's 5th burst out.

----------------------
Before a mustached diner
engrossed in Mein Bruder Mein Freund
the cook's daughter placed a rose.
------------------
.p
ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE LAKE

Poem in an English Mode

Perhaps it was merely a matter, after all,
or had been, of learning to 
accept emotion;
to float, like a child on waves,
waiting for something gentler...

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

Walking with short steps.
"I'm pretending to be old,"
I think.  "How funny."

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

"Hey, Sokrates -- 
                       get much?"
"Got free,    Turkey-
                           neck."

The gentle grace of the aged.

	                              :" ...from a cruel taskmaster"

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

Sometimes a few kind words are coin
refined
(as waking reaching for something neatly placed
though in a dream

-----------------------                                    
At the Office

"Flu shot and a gasmask please."
"It's too late and too soon,
 try this telephone."

                                    HaOn, 14.01.93

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

"What do you do?"
"Oh -- I write." 
OK, so be it.

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




.P
FOR EACH EMBATTLED STONE

Sleep hip on the ground
nose in my shoes
wake up don't eat all day
I say I'll pay
Can't do, would't be
hospitality.

                        Moshav Mevo Modi'in, 1/93

------------------------------------------------------
  
Tourists from the USA in the Old City of Jerusalem

                  "Only thing we did was wrong
                   Stayed in the wilderness little too long..."
                                USA Civil Rights Songs, ca '62

oh say we
came too soon/too late
they
passed over before us
that 
floating host
following Moses

---------------------------------------------------------
 
On "the indignities of old age"

Enfolded only in silks
Buddha at sunrise
body unlimited promise
slipped in the flux of a puking elder
and thought to summon sentinels
(to cleanse the bloody shame).
	Immigrants & angels
	resent their promised land.

--------

.p
POLITICAL POEMS, OF SORTS

Solstice Abysses

`"It's rather disconcerting
 to be at sea and war
 and then have to notice
 that the captain's mad."'
               `"My landlord's crazy
                I'm running away."'
                    `"Rabin Vows no Retreat from Deportees"'

l7
Caveat lector:  `"...'" = an hypothetic or ehanced quotation
                                                               (That was your only warning.)
l1
------------------------------------------------------------

Lines written during a leisurely brunch at the Sesame Cafe
(to Vivaldi)

over the lights of solstice hope
the snow-chilled shadow
of men below mountains
                          (for the Leader.  After Mao.)   

                           apr. 29.12.92

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

Bright stars in cold sky.
Frost falls over Bethlehem.
I sip a brandy.
                      
                      Mitzpeh Rahel
                      17.01.93, 20:45 GMT
                      :: While the USA bombs Baghdad, a haiku

------------------------------------------------------------
.P
  
Add:  FROM WHOM CAN WE LEARN

"I'd better get dressed and go home.
 I want to add something to someone's life,
 not take something away."

----------- 

Growing older, said my grandmother
only means that each decade
one can't do quite so much.

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

& Elliahu said
when 2 folks throw words like mortar rounds
let the stronger apologize
 
 -----------------------------------
 .p
ADDENDA

More fresh water than I can tote
why is my heart struck by calls of birds
taking what spills

                             (HaOn, 1/93)

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




                  




























John Donne, dirty old man
went to town in a red balloon
dirty old man John Donne




.p
200 WORDS TO SAMID POB 33498 TA 61334 NIS 48 
FROM S. Amdur, HaOn, 15170 Israel















John Donne, dirty old man
went to town in a red balloon
dirty old man John Donne
