
=poorpo14
LL=65 chars
a few new packaged apercus of lesser lustre, Jan '04
slightly selected
caveat ratting: PG-23 probably

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

Portrait of the Poet as Country Gentleman

I live "by the side of the road"
in a little house
of reinforced concrete
with a foot-thick roof
iron bars on all the windows
and a state-of-the-art--lock solid steel door
which I usually keep open.

                                           Doberdane Drive #101
                                           Moshav mevo modi'in

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


My mother said,
'When I was a young woman
 I thought that if I didn't do better than my mother
 I'd just die
 and now I think
 I didn't do as well.'

                                      (to E-S AH)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

My father once said
'I wish I'd gone into physics
not physical chemistry.
But I don't now much care
that I have 80% happiness
not 90%.'

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

Downshifting reconsidered:            

I have a 10-speed double-trans tractor-trailer
which I always drive
in only the highest gears
because I am more refined
than hi-grade diesel.

                                       (Or)  :Balaak modernizes:
                                         
                                                     
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*

"The way to go"                                      

above treeline
on the trail
they have taken the cairns
and made a maze

                                     :(halacha)

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

Agricola
 
"We loved your hundred poems.
 Please weed through them
 and pick out 2 or 3
 to send to our Forum"
                       to be torn to pieces
                                            by our literary lions.

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


Shambling back from the dentist
wearing my new grey beret
I'm cut off at the crosswalk by a car
carrying 4 powerful men
in expensive European suits.
     
          Sure glad it's my country 
          and my city
          not theirs.

                              (Jerusalem, 14 Cheshvan)

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

On a bright fresh day
after the first rains
on a bus to Jerusalem
through rocky hills
a young man in black and white
wearing eyeglasses
closes the window
and pulls down the shade.

                               :Meretz stereotype
------------------------------------------------------------------

Someone sends me a CD
with 36 Mb
of Shlomo teachings.
I take it to a neighbor
who'll make me a copy
if I give him
5 shekels.

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

The Convenience of a Locksmith:  a horror story

      "Confucious say:  He who lose old lady's key
                        get no new key."
                                         (USA folk-saying)         
      
His ex--(more-or-less)--wife
's shut him out
of his pizza-pie gourmet
cafe
so he convenes 
     *** Three Rabbis ***
to tell her to give it to him again
and he has the law
which he locked in his car
but then lost that key too
while doin' the 'loo
at half-'ast two
so he takes in hand
a 12-pound sledge
with a yard-long rod
     painted bright yellow
          with a red-trim rim
and goes in
    pounding away
       two or three times
            half-awake
               at day-
break!
       with the pretty rosette
          of a softy hard-head deadhead
saying
"I know what I'm do'ng:  there's 4 more 
                                        in my back yard man"
     only
now he needs to call to his wife
on the tinkling pellephone
to let him back into the restaurant
so he can get their dustpan
and sweep up
all those little bits of glass.

                                    12 Jan '04 -- 18 Tevet


                                    Post-scripitum:

                                   so I typed down that tale
                                   while my little pot of tea
                                   boiled unaware away
                                   on my canned-gas fire
                                   to sludge and smoke.

                                        12 Jan '04 -- 19 Tevet
                                   
                                   
                                   { + col 3 }
                                   again the wind and rain
                                        "the small rain"
                                   cleaning the street 
                                   cleaning everything
                                   even the shomer
                                   on a soft warm night
                                   only
                                   from a dark-gren dust-bin
                                   portruding
                                   plate-glass    

                                        12 Jan '04   23:59

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

More journalism:
        
In the prettily-painted
cold concrete Bet Knesset
sitting in rows at tables
dressed in black
they are debating
Tractate Shabat
about Chanuka
under the waning moon
of Tevet.
The lamp is still set by Rashi's courtyard
which they have mis-placed
inside-out.
---------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------
*
[posted 12/'03 to Mima'amakim Poetry Forum, 
<A HREF="http://www.mimaamakim.org"> www.mimaamakim.org </A>
but displayed flush-left. 
[Footnotes appended thereon ]
                          
Declamation to the Students, Take 1  [Rev. 8 Jan '04]


[+35]                  "
                        Don't the trees 

                        hide the wind between                      
                        their leaves and 

                        speak in whispers?"

[+55]                                          (Denise Levertov)

[FL]
I like miniatures
eg, my budget:
to keep eating
on what I've got
is a bit of an art.

The Talmud tells us
that even a street-corner schnorer
must be a little philanthropist
some of the time.
                 
[+40]                             ( Reznikoff was here )

[FL]
Or cleaning house
in my bachelor pad,
rearranging the clutter
in more socially acceptable patterns.

[+5] (Dutch love Vermeer;
      it's a little country
      with a wry humour. )

[FL]
And Suria Lees said
Play by the rules
maybe they're stupid
but -- 

{+8}   --  but what -- 
           oh, Eliot said
{+25}          that  twit       
{+40}                         (Plutzik got him
                               behind the playground )  
                             
{+20}     a picture without a frame
          might bleed into the sunset 
 
{+25}          Pound was a poet
               (American, naturally).
               He could recite the telephone book
               like Homer
{+30}               and darned near did.


                    "I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman":
                    Ginsberg made space for declamation.
                    Bob Dylan used it.
{+35}                      Kupferburg:  'Publish your underwear.'




{+45}                              I miss Delmore Schwartz.


{FL}
When you drop half a cap
(or, if you're Bedouin, coffee)
and they turn on       
the waterfall of revelations
   look dumb
   stay loose
   be cool

{+10}     young woman in a tickel
          eyes glowing

{FL}
You see, that's kelim
the irony of incarnation.

{+5} The first time out,
     the vessels broke.
{+10}   'Everybody knows'; nobody learns.                     



{FR}                                      First light over Media
                                   Rousseau's moon is going down
                                     over our bubble-gum Shomer.



                                                 (Mevo Modi'in
                                                 13 Kislev 05:50) 


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

PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP

If you go sailing
and the boat's about to sink
talk politely.

If the sky is falling
open the discussion
with a remark about the weather.

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

And just so it was
that Esav Uncle Sam
    mighty white hunter
cleansed the Parthenon
    with lysol aerosol
kindled mercury & sodium vapour lights
electrified the Levites
& made a McDonald's.

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

Every day
the lawyers pray.
They do everything right
& everything wrong.

[after RSC, passim.]

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

After a rainstorm
how peaceful the walkway
outside the the Old City walls.
     In the street
     jammed autos honk.

------------------------------------------------------------------
                           
a wet yesterday's paper
The shopowner says,
"if you want it, you pay for it."

--------------------------------------------------------------
 
By the day's-end bus top
a quiet poster
invites you to a presentation on
'Eating Right, Living Right, Feeling Right'
while a loudspeaker truck
in pious Hebrew
incessantly demands donations
for folks whose homes
need food.

------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
       
I don't go out much now.
Have to take my donkey
and he's getting too heavy to carry.

                   :Oy, Byzantium    

[Cf. Yeat, Byzantium:  "This is no country for old men ... "

-------------------------------------------------------------
On synergy

In the good old days
if any
three little blind Hindus
                           "or whatever"
discovered, 
                            oh, an elephant
and had to pool their -- 
'ignorant opinions' will do
                            for starters
                                          (to start us) ...

                      
           or:  Method for Metaphysicians

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


The bridegroom had insisted
                            they said
that the invitations be sent
only on recycled paper.

"No children under 18 will be seated"
and so they stood
outside the wedding feast
some swaying to mega-amps
shome shuckling franticly.

                               :but Sallinger was poignant         
       
-----------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------

daily paper front-page photo
apall'd, I glance for consolation
at the adult movies machine

                                :Mental Mikveh,  Step 1


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

Just before Shabat
she gives me a bag with 2 challot.
One falls on the floor.
She put it back in the bag.

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

& Breindel said
the lowest thing in the world anyone can do
is deny someone a toilet.

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

With a voice that could curdle milk
she opens a pizzeria.
Don't say she's got a scolding tongue, but
I'd rather french-kiss a scorpion.

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

[Posted to Mima'amakim Live Poetry Forum  28 Dec '03 ]             
            
Excerpts from the label on a can of presumably water-resisting
spray (contents not listed) purchased in Mea She'arim and
deposited in Eliahu Gal-Or's magsin, as read through 1.5 + 2.0
eyeglasses: 

"Coxy Super Protecter
"dangerous to the environment
"inhaling the fumes may damage your health
"Only spray for a few seconds!
"Irritating to skin
"Toxic to aquatic organisms,
  may cause long-term adverse effects to aquatic environment
"irritant
"Made in Germany
"20% gratis
"Brussels
"melvo.com "

(16 Dec '03)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
[posted, loc. cit.]

Reply to Neighbor Chaim                            

"a sculpture made of old soda-pop cans"
Less than that:  to display an object trouvee
is only to say:  'dig it, man'
and maybe (installation art):
'ain't some folks ugly'
                                                (Mevo Modi'in
                                                 31 Dec '03)

[N.B.: A subsequent comment [CITE] notes that 'object trovee' is
Duchamp's 'found art' ]


----------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
[ from the Jerusalem Post, Dec. XX '03 ]
                                                 
Why are We In 
               --- Iraq.

                                    "It's quiet out there.
                                     Too quiet. "

                                                 John Wayne


" ... because,
  as we know,
  there are known knowns:
  there are things we know we know.
  We also know
  there are known unknowns:
  that is to say
  we know there are some things
  we do not know.
  But 
  there are also unknown unknowns: 
  the ones we don't know we don't know."


                       Donald Rumsfeld, USA Secretary of Defense
                       (Honoree, Golden Bulls Awards, 2003) 
                       [who is published inter alia in:

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

Liora sends people all over the West.
Judy buys her a map
so she can see where they went.

(16 Dec '03)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                  
Once, at the commune
I caught the clap
took my antibiotic
told no-one
& got better.
     Robbie said, Oh yes.
                  Everyone knew
                  because you said nothing.


(Dec '03; of ca. '68)

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

Variations on a reported remark by Natan Zak 

"the sproutings of sweet nothings"

At Beverly Hills Junior High
a motley of cashmere
                        as imagined by Vice President Stevens.

On Rehov Yuppie
mostly alfalfa.

200 meters away
                  from almost anywhere here
Palestinians 
                  and everyone else
are dying                          
                  and being born
                  and eating lunch.

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

After Margritte, again:

A lunar eclipse:
'How do you feel' asks the Shomer
bays like a wolf,
and walks away.
We need silence, says the Sofer.
The Shomer returns
opens a hi-fi white car door
and clicks in 'The Sound of Silence'.

                                            (9 Nov '03
                                             14 Cheshvan)

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

& Amy said
nobody else ever asked me in
for a drink of cold water

---------------------------------------------------------------
                 
filled with compassion
he watches
and does nothing

                        :Mystic manque

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

[news item, Rodos News: ]

An Englishperson cannot do
without a more commodious 'loo

---------------------------------------------------------------
(outbox alternate)
                               
Beethoven, that ungrateful hired hack
got back at 'em
'and then I got in my little digs' said Nixon
of kicking a downed man who'd spit at him  

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

Dark skies, lights too bright.
I shamble into our Bet Knesset.
The gentlemen in black are sitting there 
at tables
holding a shiur
for 3 locals.
There's a plate of brownies
I take one, chomp, and ask
'what's the occasion'
They say, maybe, 
'aliyat haNeshama shel Reb Shlomo'.
     The brownie is made with NutraSweet
     a difficult taste to get rid of.

              & Little Joe once said,
              'Dead don't need our prayers.'.
                                                 
                                                 ( Mevo Modi'in
                                                   30 Dec '03 )

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                 
I walk down the road 
to take Eliahu's stray kittens
some month-old gourmet shop white-flour tortillas
each with a half-dozen artifical ingredients
identifiable only by E-number.

     When hungry, Rebbe Reb Zusha
     would say, clearly, 
    'Zusha's hungry.'

                                                (Mevo Modi'in
                                                 31 Dec '03)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
                
I throw a burnt chicken wing
to Butterball the Kitten
but the orange cat snakes in
snatches it up
and runs away.           
She looks at me plaintively.
     "Your brother came with guile." 

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

Motzi shabat
2 pre-teenies
giggling and hugging each other
sashay down the road
to the high-speed highway
to go tramping.
     "And Dinah went out ..."


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

I must conceed  
said Beelzebub
that, given their predicament
they often do it rather gracefully
but what would Plato say.


     :"and the posture is simply ridiculous" 


------------------------------------------------------------------
*

Misspelled handbills for a machmere kollel

"Mo' din" & "mo' dim"
or so it seems
it seems to him
is  MODI'IM  (from 'MODI'IN').

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

Overhead at Haverat Shalom

Shlomo came to the Abode.
He saw a Jewish medele.
He said, 'What are you doing here?'
And now she's living in Boro Park
& has 7 children.

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

Overhead at the Abode, ca. 1974

'He got initiated a few months ago
and now he's sitting in jail,
waiting to be tried
for murder.'

-------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now is the time
to dwell in fields
by the ripening apple trees
in a simple shelter
covered with stalks of dry grain.

Leaving my small house
of iron--re-inforced concrete
I enter unto
a six-cyliner upholstered automobile
and ride down the freeway
to our suburban shopping mall
to buy a set of cloth walls
for a succah.

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

An early-old  broken-down new immigrant 
bedecked by a preposterously motley borrowed kippa
stands in the Bet Knesset
waiting
to tell too long 
his own tale
             of
                exponentiating debacles.
The machers from double-decker concrete houses
listen politely
& explain
that they don't bring money
to a house of prayer.

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

Plain Potatoes Today                      

"Your Chanuka olive oil came today.
 Get it off my floor."
 "Go no money yet
  and not much food now."
"Get your money and take your oil.
 Since you're used to doing without
 it can wait."

                                      13 Tevet, Modi'in

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

CAVEAT COMING:
                 .
                   .
                     .
                       .
                         .
                          e
                           t
                             c
                               .











----------------------------------------------------------------
================================================================
CAVEAT TABBYCAT:  PG-103

1950's Nostalgia

and Doozer said
HE's blowing his nose.
I'D  like to SEE that.

---------------------------------------------------------------
(sketch)
               
Technology breeds odd results:
new vices for 'mature adults':
     (frustrated, lust fills channels rank)
before a CRT to wank.

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



Shalom Schwartz serves tequilla between courses; an excellent
idea.                           


 
Basho:  quoted in Haiku, by R.H. Blythe, Vol. IV Autumn-Winter,
(c) 1952 by R.H. Blythe (12th printing 1970), Published by the
Hokususeido Press, 3-12 Kanda-Nishkikdeho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo




        Asagao wo
        heta no kaku sae
        aware nari



                              The pathos
                              even when painted unskillfully
                              of the morning glory



================================================================
(sa again:)

nowadays
my neighbors scarcely speak to me
but in the early morning
their birds still sing

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









=================================================================
Caveat Retract: PG-23 again:

'shtuyot'="a stew of ridiculousnesses"

the fragility of daybreak
     Yeats:  'as clear and passionate as the dawn' 
             (daybreak is clear, sunrise is passionate.

Steve Keyes:  "Yup, nope, that's not it." ( Antioch outs '65)

(:ok, Oliphant did it first:  sub-titles)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
WIP:  Subject lines of SPAM received in response to an attempt to
download a Yahoo Homepage Free Screen Saver under the name of Fred
Frodo:

January is cold, warm up, Fred 

Do you need help to quit smoking, Fred

Credit card for 2004 -- Fred No Credit Checks

                                             



---------------------------------------------------------------
=================================================================
        CUT & PRINT & CHUCK IT OUT ONTO THE WEB FRED
================================================================= 
