=pomo0504 Poems, more of, polished maybe, from Journals Jan--April '05 --------------------------------------------------------------- And Shevki said I once knew some thieves in Istanbul. In honor of Ramadan they abstained from stealing. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Prophetic Prophylactic Pelophone: Amidst daydreams of a last new affair I grab my Handy push appropriate buttons and get in my ear 'Your combox has not yet been activated.' in a reproachful woman's tones. "No one quite as breezy as / quite as free and easy as / old Tireseas" (Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet. Cf. T.S. Eliot: "But oh, oh, oh that Shakespearian rag. It's so elegant. So intelligent.'" At which point I would hear a single squish of a muffled pedal-cymbal, an affect popular only in 1920's pop. Ellright, I think it was, points out that there really was a 'Shekespearian rag' in pop music of the time. --------------------------------------------------------------- 13 below here gusting to maybe 40 MPH too cold to piss without getting stuck skinny couple stops by the Restorante look for maps Plump George sells them cups of coffee they look at a tourist map I say hello but they don't want to talk say they're going up to Passeo del Uomo, or maybe Rosella wherever that is on skis I buy a shot of kirsch I didn't need but they don't want to talk so I go back to my computer and start writing this I finish up the kirsch and take the glass back but they're gone and George is sitting at their table in shirtsleeves and apron -- he could walk through a door without tuurning the handle -- sits there eating a plump lunch with his crew. :Jonah at Nineveh the Morning After: -------------------------------------------------------------- What Polisport has got is naught. 2 Feb '05 --------------------------------------------------------------- En ce pays artificiele je mens un vie artificielle. :Remembering blue afternoon light on Iowa snowfields, seen from a car window while hitch-hiking from Oberlin College to Chicago during winter vacation, ca. 1959 -------------------------------------------------------------- Bellinzona has large plazas with winter sun and public benches. You can stand in the sun or sit on the benches because the benches are not in the sun so the sun is not on the benches. (1 Feb '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The ptit dejeuner with its little pieces of processed cheese each wrapped in silver paper with a pretty printed picture of what it is or isn't is hearty enough for picking paper flowers by. (Strada Romana, Campra, 7 Feb '05) --------------------------------------------------------------- I think often of my teacher and ask what he would do in my situations and the answers come back 'Not what you're think of, Buddy.' ------------------------------------------------------------------ Over a bowl of soup The preacher asks grace. Maybe we fought together in the Crusades -- the real ones, not on earth. Maybe she was the king. Sometimes when the sun strikes gold and silver I can barely glance at her. Note: Tom o' Bedlam's song, as quoted in Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight (New Directions (paperback), ca. 1962): "I have no slept since the Crusades 'till then I never waked 'till the roughish boy of love where I lay me found and stripped me naked. While any sing Any feeding -- meat drink or clothing -- Come dame or maid, be not afraid poor Tom will injure nothing." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Ten days in the Alp of Shadow No sun, ten degrees below with wind Get down to the River Valley train station Sun comes out Sit on the steps drink isotonic with potatoe chips. Swiss comes out behind me says something goes back in. Look back and see in hand made graphic 'Don't sit on the steps -- Privato' (Biasca 1 Feb 05) :Swiss Cookoo Clock ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Wonders if it may be nearly time to Go Home: Today I got a bed in my workroom. They took it from my bedroom. (Campra, 31 Jan '05) --------------------------------------------------------------- 13 below sun not up yet Cousin George is first at work to serve lukewarm coffee bitter, with a dash of milk. Ya Habibi. Grazie. Walk outside, savour the clean cool air, flip it on the pisspile and pour my own which isn't any better. For that price I keep the cup. 7 Feb '05 -------------------------------------------------------------- I take to bed two cartoon books: 'Prostituta Millardara' amd TIME: 'George Bush Jr. -- Person of the Year'. Which one's the porn. "'He doesn't talk to a woman as if he's talking to a woman.'" (TIME 3 Jan '05 (Klein), quoting Senator Kay Hutchinson=) "Bush ... has always been a punk at heart." (Ibid.) "'He likes being hated. It lets him know he's doing the right thing.'" (Ibid. , quoting an anoymous 'Bush adviser') "With The New York Times, you have to read between the lines, but at least there are lines to read between." (Dave McReynolds, ca. 1964) "Nowaday when you ask for a hunded-an-hour whore, they send you in an ad man." (Lenny Bruce or maybe Herbert Gold, ca. 1958 ) ---------------------------------------------------------------- News Item -- 1789555 minuti alla fine del processo Today a 1:18 the sun came out shone through the windor on my door onto my bed that they took from bedroom and lit up my outside DVD so I took 2 photos with instant throwaway camera. I didn't got to the privy to piss like a gentleman for fear of missing it So I pee by the corner of imobilized caravan shack and the local birds start singing amd then the sun goes back in behind the ridgeline "and no birds sing"˙ at 1:25 . That night just after drak a grey wolf came with a white-tip tail and took the bread I had thrown outside. (Campra, 4 Feb '05) ------------------------------------------------------------------ George the Plump Alp Restauranteur After Hours: Taking money from people is fun but its even more fun to tell them they can't eat. (Campra 13 Feb '05, light snowstorm) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Revelations from Rodos: A gentleman may piss in his boots, but he may not piss in the boots of another gentleman. ----------------------------------------------------------------- dancing on lillypads Notes: Water-lillies on the Concord River Cf. PVK, beneath the surface of the water, all the roots of the lotus flowers are intertwined -- Shiva dancing ---------------------------------------------------------------- 'Sexual preference' reconsidered: In the reading room of the old-world hotel high above snowline two stocky men from Italy have left a video titled "Whoop in her behind" as if to say so vile is the stuff of procreation and they who take and bear it that it should only be forced into shit. ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Go, go, where you go it makes no difference where you go the LORD is at your side" (Hebrew, translation from a Psalm of David) "what the difference where I roam snow-capped mountains are my home" Colorado Mountain Club song, 1950s. --------------------------------------------------------------- In the lst-class railway carriage the lst-class English couple's two children are chattering incessantly. Each remark strikes a pose like fashion-models on a catwalk as if to say, 'Oh, how cute am I.' One child is named Pixie. The rich can be pixies for which the poor must pay. --------------------------------------------------------------- ** SKETCHES FOR RAP LYRICS Dundass, dumbed ass, double-dumb Dundass. Un / a- (/ customed as I /am to public /speaking /) I / shan't / (resist the temp/tation to a/ttempt a bit of / tweaking) of the XX of parameters of this /rap / crap / an adolescent with an attitute who can't get past the platitude-/ s of "rapid pitter-patter but it really does't XX and it really doesn't matter" (Gilbert & Sullivan, Iolanthe(?)) "matter matter matter matter matter matter matter matter" (Ibid) x Y & x Y & X -- like a /clown on a /skateboard amok on the /sidewalk who swoops / down on the /clowns of the /town -gown / town-gown / town-gown what's the /reason for this / frisson that's a-/ peassing us this /season and en/hance the /assonance THIS IS AUGMENTED WITH DIRECT INPUT ONTO =JR050307 Both are still just notes. sorry about that platitude if what you want just a Black with Attitude they won't read the /Bible they say they're not /liable Guracamole, F_ck 'em all ------------- Notes to rap sketch: this is a return to the stressed-verse of early Anglo-Saxon poetry -- maybe the Ilian too -- maybe a basic feeature of oral tradition -- It is time, not (as in post-oral poetry) beats that define the unit. But rhythm is fixed. --------------------------------------------------------------- Skiers in Zermatt at High Season: Cattle on holiday or moonwalk dropouts, they ride up in gondolas and go down the Bullied Piste so fast that they don't have time to glance at the Matterhorn. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Jerususalem, Jerusalem, sing for the night is o'er. Hosana, in the highest, hosana for ever mower." ------------------------------------------------------------------- When I was old my mother would sometimes say 'I want my mother -- I know that's odd to say but I want my mother. ' Now I'm older Sometimes I'm tired really tired but that's ok I know what I need -- to go home to my parents house and just let them take care of me for a few weeks for no money. But then I pass a mirror and look in and I'm old. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Russians left a pot of chicken that I put in the avalanche shelter at the back of the Refugio to which the inner door is now locked as the outer door has frozen shut and is blocked with drifted snow so the chicken can stay there until the spring thaw. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Swiss are digging a tunnel 57 kilometers under the mountains so trains can go through 2 hours faster. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Is anyone anywhere steering this ship: One from whom I'd hoped for leadership is now spouting shtuyot subtler emotions chopped into cubist analyticiy. gratuitious reconceptualization generating unnecessary paradoxes. playing with heresy like a lake skater with the thin edge ice. I walk out of the talk to mincha an hour in wet blowing snow to a concrete cathedral, Everyone is dressed in black-and-white and they all go out the door ignoring a whitebeard in motley. Later a kid says go down to eat so I do but no-one shows me a seat then someone says 'Where are you from there's no more food.' I look past dry-cleaned suits and dual hats on shaven faces to a bowl of beets on the table several untouched rolls and a plate of ignored honey-cake. All those Swiss riches but not a bowl of soup even for winter travelers. The shaharit nusach was so lugubrious that they must all have had breakfast at thome. Sit for half an hour falling in an out of sleep an eternity while a speaker teaches the Bible followed by a one-man monotone sheva brachas After Ma'ariv with a long-distance havdala (no wine for hoi polloi today) Agnieska asks me how it was. "A good shabbos but not a great shabbos." ------------------------------------------------------------------ George le Bonhomme au Travaille: By Honest George he's done it -- cross-bred a chicken with a centipede, and made a bodiless chicken with enough miniature legs to feed one a day to a hundred mountaineers for a week for fourteen dollars a pop with factory made unfrozen freedom fries with salt and no ketchup. ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Aged Eagle"'s Apologia for not changing his Maqam: Why must I open my mind again and put all the stuff in that backpack out on the floor -- and then sit chagrinned until I can repack it and stand up and fake it all again. The sail set at last wind balancing the centerboard the heavy old sailing skiff makes ok time now through the cold little waves. (Cf. =pvkto136) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Muhammed's mosquitos, the closing bar drunks on the street wake me a 4 A.M. (Pension LydiaHeim, Zurich, 6 March '05) (The Prophet Muhammed, be be unto him, said, There is a purpose for every being on earth. Some said, What of the mosquito. He replied, that is to wake you for morning prayers.) --------------------------------------------------------------- The terminal languour of upper-class British diction. --------------------------------------------------------------- It is 31 degrees C in Alice Spring this morning. She no longer wants me. "Israelis do not commit suicide; they go to Australia." (sa) ---------------------------------------------------------------- * Nabakov caught killed & pinned butterflies in self-defense -- emotions I mean: put in poems they're still there but can't fly up and hurt me any more. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Neo-Euclidean Guru: songbirds before sunrise cold light on white peaks He's so much on jet planes that 3 days in one place is a vacation 8 months I sit in cold shacks pissing against the wind onto the snow Rinatya writes the almond blossoms are falling in early morning yaelim come down to the stream to drink at Ein Gedi soft light on the mountains of Sfat seen from the Kineret They know all about Israel from CNN He says, over lunch 'You won't go back you stay here but it's your life go ahead -- prove me wrong.' --------------------------------------------------------------- I reply to "the proud man's contumely" in poems. That way nobody gets stuck. :Hamlet Retires to Wittenberg -------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe on the way down you bump into a thief. But you need not grow up into a thief -- you might become a post-modernist poet or a rap star. :Modification of a psychic heresy which inserts contingency into the realms of Necessity. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Don't ask for what you want until you need it. But if you ask for it and get it better take it. [#1 from me; #2 from New Buffalo. ] ---------------------------------------------------------------- The best of heros is bored. He does darned near nothing and doesn't know that he's done anything. [ Cf. Leary, Psychedlic Prayers (adaptations from the Tao te Ching): "they say, we did it all ourselves'" ] ----------------------------------------------------------------- An exercise in international English: Maybe some day I be famous poet but also dead so if so have a drink to me. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------ 'He's unpredictable.' Am I Halley's Comet? shoot him up tie him down and lock him up that he not go too close to the sun, to the moon or to our earth. "a spiritual bypass" (PVK) "a psychologic bypass" (PVK) as "roads of limited access" (sa) miss old the old towns and tunnel under mountains "man proposes and G_d disposes" (folk-saying) stay loose, Moose -- heed the feedback "tentative as a man in ambush" (1) wrote Leary seeing the Tao on LSD Of PVK they always said "schedule subject to change without notice." (Rhazuns valley, 24 March '05) Notes (1) Leary, Psychedelic Prayers, Imitations from the Tao te Ching ------------------------------------------------------------ "Hat gottes Sonne sex" Headline in the Good Friday edition of The Blick We long to flee carnality to an indulgent deity where sheltering beneath his wing we won't have to do anything. --------------------------------------------------------------- I telephone the Arosa Kosher Hotel The owner is at his prayers. I call back. He says, You can't afford us but if you go to Lugano for Purim and gaze into the lake you will see a masque. (Rhazuns, 12 Adar-Bet ) ---------------------------------------------------------- "You look like a Swiss character." "Somone has to and the Swiss are too busy." (Lugano, Purim / Good Friday, 25 March '05) ---------------------------------------------------------- "Spring is sprung the bird [ boid ]is on the wing. But that's absurd the wing is on the bird. Spring is here Christianity has won and may retire. ------------------------------------------------------------ Shortly before Pesach she threw my hiking shoes out on the front stoop with the hametz. On the other side of the Ocean or another side of the Sea Jesus is crucified or so they're sure they've heard. The "knock me off" (R. Shlomo) to share his suffering I guess and tidy up their relationship. In a day_and_a_half Christ will arise (agon over, what's for dinner) I'll try to work on it. (1) (Campra, Good Friday /Purim '05 ) (1) "Sorry, you're too old." "I'll work on it." from "A Chorus Line" --------------------------------------------------------------- The strange woman stands at the crossroads and says: Every day the same, every Shabat too -- "let go of it" and come to me. Just so the day you do she says, Sorry, I've got to go out tonight. Don't wait up. 'Strange woman' is from Proverbs "let go of it" -- Psychobbable maxim Just so -- Kipling, "Just So Stories ------------------------------------------------------------- My Purim / Good Friday Sermon By Lake Lugano a well-to-do woman walks a dog on a leash who should be running the alps and follows behind picking up his turds. 25 March '05 ---------------------------------------------------------- "man proposes and G_d disposes" (folk-saying) stay loose, Moose -- heed the feedback "tentative as a man in ambush" (1) wrote Leary seeing the Tao on LSD Of PVK they always said "schedule subject to change without notice." (Rhazuns valley, 24 March '05) ----------------------------------------------------------------- * Down to my last francs I go back up to the Alp stop at the Post and see they sent me back all the gifts I tried to give her but none of the hundreds I'd lent. :"'So I'll eat it myself,' said the little red hen." (Childrem's story, USA 1940's or earlier. I recall my grandmother quoting that phrase. ------------------------------------ I lend them three books amongst the most precious in the world within still-recorded time. He says, I'd rather you did not place them on my land like border-stones. Notes: Those three books are: Genesis Interlinear (Edition Rashi Chumash, JPS 1954, nor for the Rashi but for the larger type -- for it is mostly old men, with their weakening eyes, who turn at last back to their inherited and disregarded religion.) HIK, Collected Sayings, available from Omega Press, The Abode, New Lebanon, New York. In addition to the Gayan, published seperately and in German and French if memory serves, this includes the Aphorisms and The Bowl of Saki (the latter also published seperatly.) A book of Klee, not for the text, which I have not read, nor even for the line drawings, which I do not yet "grok" (that is, comprehend as a gestalt, the term is from Heinlein, 'Stranger in a Strange Land'), but for his recognition and presentation of the harmony of colours, as Bach did for the emotional and maybe spiritual harmony of tones. Henry Moore's sculptures, ostensibly of strong nude women, show a harmony of -- spaces, more than shapes, one might say. I once thought Franz Kline showed a harmony of two-dimensional shapes. As to the border-stones -- this is not Frost, 'Mending Wall'. If you walk about 15 minutes from Kibutz HaOn, which is on the eastern shore of the Kineret ("Sea of Galillee), to the base of the Golan Heights, you see a pillar that marked the 1967 border. ------------------------------------------------------------ He locks up everything but the potty goes home to Easter dinner and says, You're the boss here now. He asks if I have anything to eat. I say, Pasta. He says, OK. (Campra, 27 Mar '04 -- Easter Sunday -- a grey drizzly day -- 16 Adar Bet ) ----------------------------------------------------------------- I'm just trying to keep the bridge propped up so she can come back over it if she wants to some day. -------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 7 Apr '05 (Lyall): "Poet serches for the right words: Writisting tasefully about royal wedding can be tricky "none of the obvious rhymes -- vanilla, flotilla, Godzilla -- seems appropriate, somehow" Let us now praise Ms. CAMILLA so normal she could be VANILLA Charles' Ship of State will her FLOTILLA now enhance; the Prince may now into her pants get legally and regally with wingED ears like to GODZILLA. "'Every single time, it's an impossible job,' Potts said ...'On is not entirely clear why anyone bothers to do it'" The Queen won't give away the groom one more damp mantle 'decks his gloom Despite at last a legal bedding Mama won't be at the wedding Nor will there be a nuptial dinner even princes could be thinner. "looming like Banquo at the feast" our Perennial Victim to say the least "Poets as a group tend to be think-skinnerd, jealous and supicious and the elevation of one to such a public post inavriably opens the door to everone else's rude comments." The Prince regrets We took occasion for adulterous liason (We shall pray it first and then the ladies will respond, Ah men. (It's the climax of this story of a Tory purgatory.) Adultery is common too it's what adults and dolts do do "Motion declined to be interviewed on how his poem was coming along" ------------------------------------------------------------------ "You keep changing direction" Ever try to steer through fog toward a harbour? --------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning and good-bye, lady I wept you for a day It's time to work and play now The pain can go away The morning star sits high Find coffee. "Liebe kan brernen un nit oirflehrnen a Hary kan weinen, weinen oin trairnen" (Yiddish riddle song) "You may think you are bing disloyal to your sorrow but your sorrow can take care of itself." (PVK, Zenith) HE gave us things to do, too a blessing for the Way. Snow still lies on the heights and the sun-warmed air is cold. "as children break their toys" (HIK) "amd ginger be hot in th' mouth" (Shakespeare) pale blue, pale green have come again "The day breaks. Your mind aches." (Beattles) (Campra, 4 April '05 -- 24 Adar II -- 27 Safar ) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Roman a Clef to a Storage Shed: On the other side of the mountain closed in snows she has left me without leaving her rooms. Others will come in several months. So now I sail through time scorning dreams with all I own between the seas in a long room narrow as a captain's cabin. Black coffee, dried sphaghetti and a pack and a half of butter. Through the night wet spring snow falls. Good avalanche weather. (Campra, 8 Apr '05) :Lines written upon awakening after a midnight snack of a sip of Cynar and a 'deviled' egg with mustard ---------------------------------------------------------------- Snapshot of a Runaway Railway Train: "So I'd like to know where you got the NOtion." (Supremes?) It ain't you and whoever put it into your head is off-track. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Reply to the Neophytes: "How old are you." "I have two lower teeth left but I can still eat OK." "You can quote us." --------------------------------------------------------------- a 'well-wrought urn' or better a warm dry pair of shoes in snow with laces that don't fray and a square meal at a fair price -- rare in this world now that they still uphold. ------------------------------ Up the icy road to the hotel Hour-and-a-half Open? Open. Tea? OK. Bread? No food. Might ask the boss. Two little two-fifty cups of tea but the boss don't show I watch a well-laid fire of dried wood behind a glass fireplace waiting for some heat. No more sun. More snow maybe Might's well walk down the hill. (Acquacalda, 10 April '05, Rosh Hodesh Nisan) :I empty the sugar-bowl & eat the tea-leaves ------------------------------------------------------------ Travelers landing in Israel are given hot face-clothes in the Businesspersons' section only so one can identify the serfs and proles by their dirty faces. --------------------------------------------------------------- Take 2: A Lesson from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: A 'Gvalt!' is something that is about to explode such that our problem is simply to let it explode to our advantage. --------------------------------------------------------------- Honest George goes haut cuisine 'Tartare et Pommes Frittes' -- raw and fried in oil -- between the two one well-cooked meal. Note: Cf. Voltaire, "had either thief but been repentant" They've hung me up in portrait between my two critics. It would have been a true crucifixtion had either thief repented. ------------------------------------------------------------- INEPT ATTEMPTS AT WRITING RHYMES Pre-emptory reply to any potential critic: "I can make little of your letter; if you can then write this better." Now for my virtues or my sins I'm exiled from our Holy Land In fifty years ('twas quite a feat) we've covered it over with concrete a thousand cars a minute pass carcinogenic unleaded gas security crooks came quick and 'gyp'd us of our shield of eucalyptus a bungalow steel re-inforced concrete da-da-da a summer oven --------------------------------------------------------------- Hillonim Reconsidered: Some son_of_a_bitch whom I have not known is trying to throw me out of my home It seems in brief the wraith* is meaning to use me for his Pesach cleaning. Now what can I save from the wreck of this involuntary Exodus. Notes: *wraith -- Cf. Tolkien's Trilogy -- 'Ring-wraith' -- a being, formerly human, spiritually and ethically eviscerated by power. (Campra, 15 April '05 -- 6 Nisan ) -------------------------------------------------------------- 'Fixing'* Reconsidered: "And if the goyim wear red shoelaces, we wear black." (?Kitzer Shulchan Aruch? (paraphrase)) "Oh Pious Ones"** you've done me wrong so when I'm tempted to a sin _____( conquilles sans Jacques*** or similar stock -- __________or stroganoff is sin enough -- _______________I ought not err so far off course _______________as eat my my pig or dog or horse ____________________though Friday bedtime I just might ____________________flick on and off the potty light _________________________and will continue if you please _________________________to try the Alpine yellow cheese ______________________________I cannot deem it such a crime ______________________________to mix with milk a bovine enzyme ______________________________'tis less than one part under sixty (and even (it may come to that!) from time to time take off my hat) I'll think of you and do it. (Campra 15 April '05 ) Notes: * Fixing -- Tikun -- Cf. Malmud, 'The Fixer' A tikun is the compensation if not rectification of a worldly inustice ** "Oh Pious Ones" -- Rumi, as translated -- "Forgive me, oh pious ones, I am drunk with ecstacy' (quoted from memory) *** Conquilles St. Jacque -- some sort of scallop dish, no doubt fried with herbs and white wine in butter, which I would often see advertised at a restaurant in the Old Town of Rodos, but then, to my regret, resisted. I did once make it for a Jewish young woman whom I was, if not quite courting, sporting; she subsequently married another. ---------------------------------------------------------- "if you had been there you would" have stayed -- (Hagadah) But whose it's asks 'what this do you' that questions's likely coming from the newly ortho- doxly frum we left behind collaborators whose broken faces seem to say like Rodin's 'Burgers of Calais' 'I tried to do the best I can while selling out my fellow man: I don't deserve this calumny for putting first my family.' --------------------------------------------------------------- Poem with extra words in it; George has done it -- he's watered the cappucino now in littler cups perhaps with lots more froth hidden beneath the chocolate dust. Soon everyone will walk around half-asleep and he can rule the world. ------------------------------------------------------------- "Format failed due to general failure -- OK": A long way from the airport the plane starts its descent. (Campra, 22 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- With a storm starting in Olivone an hour before sunset no time to walk up on ice I ride down to Biasca to get a good night's sleep away from the chicken-coop by the railroad tracks and find myself missing Chicago winter days. It must be time to go. ------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Reflects Upon the Limitations of his "sullen craft": After all my writ about that turkey it's amazing he can still walk. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Up before dawn Over one mountain and under another shuttling 7 packs & 17 books I take the schoolbus up from Biasca in an incessant barrage of adolescent chatter set against heavy metal radio within sealed windows. I flit continually in and out of sleep for an eternity like a shade in some circle of Dante's hell. (Jan 13 '05) --------------------------------------------------------------- Bellinzona has created at great expense a grand piazza with no place to sit. In one corner the sun shines for several hours on winter days. An ambitious cafe has placed its chair there to sell the sun for a cup of tea. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The fragility of gentility: I, having stayed in an adequate hotel & leisurely there taken breakfast aw well then ride along in a first-class carriage to acquire technological accessories with my last heavy coins. Then, seeing no sign to a W.C. I in a corner place runaway pee hoping that the cops don't pass before I've had my piss. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In unadmitted lonliness, taking cheer from hotel TV I see women and in the day see many more and say 'But these are not women.' --------------------------------------------------------------- After Hemmingway's wax_paper__wrapped sandwiches: In the winter mid-day sun on a grande piazza where once castle-to-castle walls blocked lakes and fertile land from mountain men the Bar_Codeborgo-_Cafe__Snackbar has placed its tables on the portico of the Banca_dello_State_del_Cantone_Ticiono. The Swiss hae found a way I see to sell or save the sun today for aristocracy. (Belllinzona, 19 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shopping is the revenge of the downtrodden. --------------------------------------------------------------- Suicide does not atone for one's sins, it adds to them. ----------------------------------------------------------------- They stole my home but carefully left untouched even my open olive-oil. (Campra, 17 Jan '05 -- 8 Shvat) ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Rejoice, Israel -- Your Messiah has come." "Set another plate for supper." ------------------------------------------------------------------ A Christmas Carol for Epiphany (U.S.A. Traditional , 1940s or 1950s based on English traditional) We three kings of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar It was loaded and exploded shot from yonder star. We two kings of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar It was loaded and exploded shot from yonder star. Me the King of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar ot was loadeed and (As heard by the Poet in Shady Hill School at the age of less than 10, or possibly in Belmont Junior High Schoo, and augmented by Himself upon Epiphany in the year of your Lord 2005 more or less, upon which day the Poet did Learn what Epiphany is, sort of.) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The day before it was time to leave I lost my watch. (Rhazuns, 12 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wandering Jew Take 2: Forever pilgrims or exiles Packing up all my sentiments to go to another place -- She has things to do in Poland. (Rhazuns, 13 Jan '05 -- 4 Shvat) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Hiked back up to Campra against the wind at the end 10 degrees below zero and found out that Georgi Gnocci ex Andros has learned a new trick -- He still sells hot water to cold hikers but just a little bit less now -- 1.5 deciliters for 3 dollars with the teabag of your choice. 20 dollars a liter for hot water in the winter Alps. Notes: "I'm the man, the very fat man, who waters the workers' beer." (U.S. Union Song, ?1930's?) ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Contemplates the Mitzva of Dwellling in Eretz Israel: In the interests of Better Business I have changed accommodations from exclusive tenancy in a 10-room ski-lodge self-catering with natural iron wood-stove heating and a private skating rink in the living room when I wash the floor to exclusive tenancy in a caravan without water insulated with fiber-class exposed only on the roof and more luxurious that those rented for thousands of dollars a day by off-white persons crossing the exclusively English Channel. Trying to remember Rabelais I pee behind the shack. It won't melt until springtime. Eventually I will leave an ice-sculpture name it The Yellow Peril and go home. (Campra, 16 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Contemplates his Receipts from a cut-rate Swiss Hotel: Stayed there 17 days and not a free night 50 for a shoebox room and if I skip breakfast they knock off 3. Paying 9 bucks for a plate of garlic bread When I pay the bill I fumble for the last 5.20 and the owner says, Oh, it doesn't matter. Trattoria Seilbahn, Rh„zns, 081--641-1149 ----------------------------------------------------------------- She is about to travel a thouand miles on a hundred dollars. I say, Can I help you with anything? She says, Yes: How do I translate "At-One-ment"? ------------------------------------- "'At'One'ment'": (Word-play used by HIK, Unity of Religious Ideals') and by others, eg Reb Zalman) First, it's 'fixing' -- tikun -- (as best you can9 and only then can one ask forgiveness first below, then Above; and maybe that's to make one at-One with our fellows and then maybe with that long-lost plan of Heaven. --------------------------------------------------------------- Dialectic criticism with a Swiss Railway Conductress: "In Andermatt you have 3 minutes change tracks to change trains. Use the underpass's 25 steps." "I know. Once I almosed crossed the tracks. A trainman shouted at me. So I walked back a few seconds ahead of the Express. I would have been entirely my fault, of course but you should change the schedule anyhow." "Have a good trip." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Poem with one reused line or Kvetches of the Idle Rich #623 -- The Poet Pauses before Applying Hand-Cream: I, having used the First-Class PanoramaWagon Potty must duly do my doti duty viz. to wash my hands but this is Swiss the water will not run until you first twist into it detergent strong enough for a grease-monkey bridegroom and harsh enough for a born-again battleship. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Heard on errv Shabat at a Meditation Camp: 'In '67 I was in the Paratroops. The Jordanians sent their enlisted men first. We let them go and shot the officers. I have no spoken of this for 25 years.' Notes: "I do not blamde the Arabs for killing our sons. I blame them for making our sons kill their sons." (Golda Meir) ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Swiss are very efficient. Electic eyes turn on electric lights for only 1,75 minutes. So if you poop too slow it may take six clicks. That uses extra electricity but it is very efficient. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Once in Belmont High School we ran against Lexington High. I ran the 1000. So did Spike Paranya who might have made the Olympics but for a college Charley Horse. ---- The lived next door when I was born maybe I was named after him and my brother after his father, John who died of penumonia when the ambulance came too slow. It was a 3-lap track Spike too off inconspicuously and passed me on lap 2. Afterwards he shook my hand and said 'All that matters is that you keep beating your own time.' (Olivone-Campra Strada Romana, 13 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Apologia pro via sua: In baseball, at Shady Hill I played left_center field -- the 10th man on a 9-man team. If the ball gers past the shortstop and past the left and center fielders I can pick it up. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= Remains to dig out Posted JR's from Website, since many poems went straight from scrap paper to Website to trashcan. ===============================================================