=po0401 New poems, collected Jan '04 -- sa=Steve Amdur, Mevo Modi'in, 73122 Israel ================================================================= RECOLLECTED FRAGMENTS: [Fragment, ca. 1976: Chaucer parody: The chick who could not get no satisfaction is now reborn a woman: Hail, Affirmative Action. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Fragment: New York Magazine Contest ca. 1976: (not sent) To use varous words, including silver, herb, Nixon High on his white 'ospray double-agent xx6 searchs the skies X He's dismembered the Service X This Fu Manchu, the foe-man, Chou may come and go; Quick, Silver, Away! I can't get a fix on this 'Herb; F_ck Nixon. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fragment: The Soliloqy of Polonious of Dallas: Forebearance, poor Clarence; this osentatious Austin Texas wench's outrageous; won't make it naked: go to Juarez where the whore' is --------------------------------------------------------------- Fragment: Wisdom's child th'invevitable hour hath beguiled --------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================== ================================================================== ================================================================ MORE FRESH-FRIED MOUSE-PATOOTIES =============================================================== * My visiting friends show me rose oil. Need sage here in daytime. ----------------------------------------------------------------- * (posted to Mimamaakim) Mispelled handbills for a machmere kollel "Mo' dim" and "mo' din" or so it seems it seems to him is MODI'IN (from 'MODI'IN') ----------------------------------------------------------------- (posted to Mimamaakim) Reply to Neighbor Chaim "a sculpture of old soda-pop cans" Less than that: to display an objet trouvee is only to say: 'dig it, man' and maybe ('installation art'): 'ain't some folks ugly' ---------------------------------------------------------------- I made a cheese A mouse ate a bite. The gourmets come & discuss the mouse-patooties. :Illustration for the Theorem of Lesser Fleas ------------------------------------------------------------ =============================================================== ================================================================= "Call this woman -- she wants to get married." "Are you sure?" "Of course. She's told me so for years." ------------------------------------------------------------------ "great is YOUR trust ... " [1] Hey Tonio Kroeger -- [2] your gypsy wagon came last night festooned with dirty ribbons as usual & drawn by your pet nightmare. [3] Quite feeding the chickens chickenfeed flip your discs for frisbees into the river and get back into it. You know it's you; we even painted your name on it. "The age demanded" [4] "an acthelerated imagth of ith own grimathe" again? No; now it's instant gratification if not self-abuse. & Telus said, "Wash your face." Reboil the coffee. "Oh, the mind has mountains" [5] and ogres too [6] who hide behind the boulders at least until you see them. [7] Notes: [1] Siddur, morning brachot [2] Heinz Politzer, in lectures UCB (Fall '60, as I recall) pointed out the North/South, duty/freedom conflict in Mann's Tonio Kroeger and Death in Venice. But of course Heine's tree poem said it first. [3] I read a medieval poem somewhere: "and ?faced? the night-mare in her den ... and aroint thee, witch, arroint thee!" So later, Jung, [7], "he who does not confront his Shadow will in the end encounter it as Fate". [ I don't know the original -- again: I assume Jung said, or meant, Fate, not Destiny; again, Destiny is dharma, the actualization of one's potentialities (PVK: "if you would be what you should be"); Fate is the default condition, what happens if you do nothing. It's maybe letting all your nurture/nature weaknesses act themselves out. [4] Pound, Mauberly [5] Gerard Manley Hopkins, again [6] So you see how Tolkien adds to the meta--Arche-typal myth of the 'Spiritual Quest'. (And, apropos I don't quite know now, Dylan Thomas again: "I would be tickled by the rub that is / Man, be my metaphor") ----------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================== In a light early morning rain two kids wait for the schoolbus. The shomer's blue__bubble_gum Landrover is parked outside the House of Prayer to make a minyan. ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Sir Boy" We have a new Assistant Shomer who may join the army when he's old enough. He rides around and around in the shomermobile sleeping. He has a telephone for emergencies but won't give out the number because each call costs him money. Modi'in, 28 Jan '04 ---------------------------------------------------------------- * She said get a shoebox to put your papers in. So I bought a pair of shoes half-price. One shoe don't fit but the shoebox works. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The shomer, Jake sits by the gate all night with his wakeable backup man. He doesn't carry a pelephone because it might be dangerous. ------------------------------------------------------------- * She works day and night for the poor and won't ask me in on a cold rainy Shabat afternoon for a bowl of hot soup. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cat clawed a hole in the screen door so Hai cut out all the screen but left the door until she got rid of the cat. Cat stayed. Door's still there with no screen. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fumblebum resurrected! as a Webpage! 2-D, man -- it's easy all mindstuff let the 3-D body go for now -- work on it later. :The Apotheosis of Humpty-Dumpty or :Rewind -- Henry Emerging from the Missouri ================================================================== My dentist gives me an estimate of $5000. I need to borrow $5 for antibiotics today. They don't understand. 8 Feb '04 ----------------------------------------------------------------- * "I tell everyone: 'Don't bring me anything except on Friday afternoons.' But some do anyhow so I yell at them and then they don't talk to me for a month or two but sooner or later they get it together." ------------------------------------------------------------------ A clean-cut haredi whatever that is comes to Shoshana's pizza place challenges the hexsure spots a calling card for an alcoholic oasis open on Shabat and demands it be removed. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Advanced Halacha: D.C. ad lib He gave a get but then they got (having 'got a lot of gets) back (& got it) but then not so now he has to get her a get again ----------------------------------------------------------------- Again they call *** 3 Rabbis *** to renew their divorce. She forgets amd leaves the door unlocked. I call him to tell her. ------------------------------------------------------------- Tied in a small back yard the newly spayed young dog looks sad as if life had passed her by. ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHERE'S HOWARD ROSENBERG ETC. An ageing etc. expatriate red diaper baby pours some red dye into a kiddie pool, floats a paper boat with a newspaper photo, rips off a bit of Bach beause he likes the title, & writes on the wall something like poetry. Everybody calls the congolomeration 'installation art', whatever that it (but art (")it ain't necessarily so("). The Swedes throw a gala opening & invite the amateur Israeli Ambassador who, on or off the edge of a breakdown, (")proceeded to(") piss in the pool. The 'Happening' is now complete, excerpt for an exponentially diminishing cascade of applause. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Baala Tchuva: Everything came down last night but cats & dogs: dust, rain, fog, & a cold hard wind. I say: 'Stormy weather.' She says: 'Oh? I think it's beautiful.' --------------------------------------------------------------- Old men embrace Descartes escaping into his simplistic dualism from "the indignities of old age". [Quote is from Karl Meyer, in a remark to is mother, Dr. Doris Yakhouer Meyer Fortes, z'lb ] --------------------------------------------------------------- PORTRAIT OF A NEIGHBOR Our residual ratfink lives in a dark block-up concrete box like a rat squat drives in after dark in a white van fan-belt squeaking dropping lug-bolts parks the an back door splat up to the front steps speaks to no-one turns on no lights emerges at daybreak in a business shirt pisses on the front lawn and drives out again. ---------------------------------------------------------------- On Purim he puts paid to a 15-year feud and then says, "I need a drink." ----------------------------------------------------------------- I pay Mike to put in a new light. All they say is: "Who did you ask." 5 Adar / 27 Feb '04 ---------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= =============================================================== "A young girl will break your heart." [Anon.] "Oh. Do people still do that?" (King Frederick the Great, as his carriage-horses shied at a couple on the Park Promenade.) Home from the Pubic Wars Don Quixote looks a vampire's doggy-bag. He met a Master of Psychology. She says she loves him but won't marry because being 50 he might die before their kids grow up. ------------------------------------------------- Stops by my pad to charge his battery telephone. Phone rings. He deploys an excellent intellect to browbeat his backup lady by disavowing his love. Drinks a glass of coffee with a canker sore; and leaves to hustle a flight back to Europe. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Umpire's Apologia: Don't like the call? Blame the pitcher. --------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= ================================================================= NEWS ITEM FROM OUR MINISTRY OF DEFENSE after the Snow White Red "'but 't_was a famous victory'" pale blue sky birds in plainsong warm wind through the wild barley yesterday morning: The Sheik was in his wheely-chair coming out of pre-dawn prayers We sent him, hovering on thin air one $20,000,000 USA Apache Helicopter hung with two Heracles missiles. Zap! (Or, Britspeak: Bugger all.) The wheelchair survived tangled and bloody. The Sheik was a saint of an alien species He once found a woman "taken in adultery" that is, having had two babies and beem saddled with a despised husband to husband her that waves of disposable children shall break on the walls of the occupier of our, not their, sacred land she made love once or more with another man. The Sheik said purify thyself gird thy loins with gelegnite that your womb may bring forth rusty nuts and bolts from unto thy sullied parts into many who sit at ease, in some expensive cafe sipping cafe latte conspiring copulation preferably Jews. They will gather now our Watchers Vulture Deities of the Implacably Prentious Heavenly Din the International Herald Tribue the Guardian the Times Le Monde to toll the tale of our ancient inexpiable sin. -------------------------------------------------------------- MANDOLIN MEMOIRS IN A SHARAF In 1959 I joined West Point with Colin Powell who was quite unpopular. One year later I quit and hid in school. My graduating class went to Vietnam as 2nd lieutenants where most got shot in front or back while I hid in school. Eventually They gave me an Honorable Discharge which (disclaiming "all them Benefits") I framed and hung in the place of honorable discharges above the commode. 23 March '04 -- 1 Nisan ---------------------------------------------------------------- * Lust's the least of little sins for many old men would wish it again. --------------------------------------------------------- My cat sits on the roof just out of reach plays with my fingers and won't come down so I toss it up some bread. Sometimes I can toss it down squawking and it's happy again. I go away it goes back up. For 3 years I sat on the Rodos shore. Sometimes someone came over to help me return. I said nothing until they brought me food then I said thank you and enjoyed the food on the beach. --------------------------------------------------------------- Erev Shabat haGadol & my little cat's back up again on ny foot-thick reinforced concrete roof. Mid-morning yom haRishon 13th I go next door: "Borrow your stepladder 10 minutes?" "Can't do; bedike chametz." ------------------------------------------------ ================================================================ LAST CHANCE HAMETZ CAFE As she serves the customers kosher l'meHadorin her tounge tears apart the hired help. 14 Nisan, early evening =============================================================== ================================================================ ===============================================================